In this episode, veteran defence journalist Sandeep Unnithan joins host Dev Goswami to decode Operation Sindoor — India's response to Pahalgam terrorist attack.
Sandeep and Dev dive deep into how India’s layered air defence network, including the IACCS (Integrated Air Command and Control System), played a pivotal role in thwarting Pakistani aerial threats. What was the X factor that gave India the edge? Was the much-talked-about S-400 system deployed? What was sitaution like in the commmand and control centre?
The two also explore the escalation ladder — a concept from military theory — and how India used it both during the days of fighting of Operation Sindoor and more broadly to counter Pakistan’s nuclear posturing. Why is this theory studied so deeply in strategic circles? And how does it play out in real-time decision-making?
Sandeep and Dev also look at the Indian Navy's posturing during the conflict as well as the roles played by the Indian Army and Indian Air Force. And as a final thought, the two discuss Pakistan's Kirana Hills and the speculation that the nuclear weapons storage site may have been hit during the operation.
Produced by Prateek Lidhoo
Sound mix by Suraj Singh
Sandeep and Dev dive deep into how India’s layered air defence network, including the IACCS (Integrated Air Command and Control System), played a pivotal role in thwarting Pakistani aerial threats. What was the X factor that gave India the edge? Was the much-talked-about S-400 system deployed? What was sitaution like in the commmand and control centre?
The two also explore the escalation ladder — a concept from military theory — and how India used it both during the days of fighting of Operation Sindoor and more broadly to counter Pakistan’s nuclear posturing. Why is this theory studied so deeply in strategic circles? And how does it play out in real-time decision-making?
Sandeep and Dev also look at the Indian Navy's posturing during the conflict as well as the roles played by the Indian Army and Indian Air Force. And as a final thought, the two discuss Pakistan's Kirana Hills and the speculation that the nuclear weapons storage site may have been hit during the operation.
Produced by Prateek Lidhoo
Sound mix by Suraj Singh
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is India Today Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Welcome to season three of In Our Defense, the podcast
that takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
Dave Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
to decode all things to do with India security and
explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for
(00:27):
stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
This is In Our Defense.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
It's been a bit over seven days now since India
and Pakistan had a pause in their fighting that was
triggered in the aftermath of operations Indur. In our Defense
was away for a while because of things that were happening.
It was just too hectic for us at the newsroom,
away covering the events and trying to make sense of
it in the moment. And on this episode I have
with me Sandy Punnitan, a veteran of defense journalism and
(01:00):
in my view, one of the foremost defense reporters right
now in the field. And Sandiv I don't know if
you know this, but In Our Defense originally was designed
around you. It was supposed to me as the host.
They've and you were supposed to be the guest.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yes, yes, but things could not work out back then,
so we had a bishik Pala in season one, and
then in season two we had Shivaru and now I
finally managed to do what this podcast was supposed to
start with, got you on the on the hot.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Thank you, thank you, Thanks for getting me on your
hot seat and on your show.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah, it's a real honor.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Yeah, for our listeners and yours. Sandi has around over
over thirty years of experience. We're not wrong covering Defense
twenty two or a round of which have been with
Today the Group, in the magazine before that, If I'm
not wrong, you were with the Express, and most recently
you were with the TV nine group, So a podcast
for you from print to I think you've also been
(02:02):
on TV for the last few days, by the way,
every day, not to you know. I remember back in
the day when you were with us with the group.
I used to show up on TV once in a
while whenever something happened. But for the last few days,
almost daily you've been on TV. So it's been quite
the change of setups for you.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
The nature of conflict as well. It's fast rapid, intense,
short duration.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So on this episode, Sandiepai wanted to focus and sort
of decode with your expertise, with your knowledge, the India's
reaction when it comes to those four or five days
of operations Indur because there are many many different aspects
to the entire operation itself. You have the first strike
on the night of May seven that took out nine
terror linked sites in Pakistan and Pakistan Kubat Kashmir. But
(02:48):
I want to focus instead more about what happened after that,
the escalation, the escalation made trix so to speak, and
how did India perform at those levels, what happened behind
the scenes. I mean, you will know some of it
through your sources, but you can also guess a lot
of it because of your experience covering defense. So you
would be able to know, you would be able to say,
you know, I don't know if that but exactly is
(03:10):
what happened, but that probably is what happened, which is
what we want on this podcast. Let's start with the
air defense because I think those four or five days
have shown that the Indian air defense was.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Completely completely on point.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
I don't think a single projectile sort of was able
to per penetrate it. There was this one off incident,
if I'm not wrong, in Punjab, where an arm drone
sort of crashed. What we know is it was a
debris It had already been kind of taken out by
one of the air defense missiles, but then at that
debris fell on.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
A house, leading to some injuries.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
But that was the only incident that we're aware of
where any Pakistani projectile was able to penetrate the shell.
On season two of An in Our Defense, we had
an entire episode on air defense and we'll have a
link to that in the show notes for people who
want to understand how India's air defensis structured. But for
a brief sort of a sort of a crash course,
It's like you know concentric circles. You have a small circle,
(04:06):
then you have a larger circle, then you have a
larger circle, then you have the largest circle. So at
the outermost layer you have the S four hundred, the
legendary esp on hundred Russian origin. Then you have the
middle layer where you have the AKA sam surface the missiles,
you have the Israeli barricade missiles. Then you have the
short range systems, the Spider, the QR SAM and then
(04:26):
you have the extremely short rage. This would be like
the battle specific the battle field specific air defence, the
man pats, the L seventy four fours guns, the Zoo
twenty three guns, uh and more. That's a crash course
from you. I want to know what was it X factor,
this air defense, it coming together? How did we manage
(04:49):
day after day for those three four nights rather to
ensure that nothing, nothing at all across through?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Well, good question, Dave. And you know, so.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
You've just named a whole panopoly of defense systems, from
the Quadra to the Barack eight and the S four
hundred and the man pads and L seventy. These are
systems manufactured by three or four countries, some of them indigenous,
acquired over several decades, for five decades. And you know,
(05:22):
to a casual viewer, it would appear to be chaos.
It's anarchy, right, But there's a system that knits all
of these together and which puts them puts every object
on a chessboard. Everything has a task, right, one is
upon the other, one is the queen.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
The S four hundred.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Possibly be the queen because it's so multifarous. It is
such a powerful asset. So it's like a chessboard. The
chessboard here is the IACCS, the Indian Air Forces Integrated
Air Combat Command and Control System, which was set up
something three decades ago. And the start point of this
(06:03):
was when you had the Purulia arms drop. Yes you
know about that very famous thing of that Antono aircraft
coming in showering weapons in West Bengal, making not one
but two entries into Indian airspace.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
That was literally the wake up call.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
For the Indian Air Force and they realized that, hey, listen,
we need to set up a system that addresses air
defense threats like this. And that is when the slow
process started to come about of knitting all of these
diverse assets air defense capabilities, radar, civil, commercial, military, all
of them into one network. And that is where IICCS
(06:37):
comes in. And it's one of the most secret and
very less spoken about capabilities. I know where the base is,
for instance, few of us have been privileged to visit
it while in the on the beat. But it's best
that we leave these out because, I mean, this is
something that you don't want to talk about.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
These capabilities.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
These are strategic capabilities and these have actually kind of
risen to the occasion when it was demanded of them.
So air defense is really important because as you have
offensive air power, a very critical component of offensive air
power is your air defense network, because you not only
have to have the ability to inflict punishment on the
(07:17):
adversary using offensive air power, but you also should have
the shields that will protect you from his retaliation. So
that is essentially the two components of this. You have
the offensive air power network with which is primarily cruise
missiles BrahMos and air launched weapons, the fighter aircraft squadrons
and all of that, and you have this very competent,
(07:38):
capable AD network. So what this escalation ladder that was
planned by these forces saw the Air Force inflicting the
first wave of strikes which they did on the seventh
of May as part of Obsindhu. The first wave the
AD network is meant to absorb Pakistan's retaliation. Now in
twenty nineteen as well, saw the operation that they launched.
(08:01):
They called it swift Retort, which is to respond within
hours to an IF attack on Pakistan, which is what
happened in Balacote on the twenty sixth of February where
you had for the first time since the nineteen seventy
one war, the Indian Air Force crossing into Pakistan, Pakistani territory,
into their airspace and dropping those PGMs on that camp
(08:23):
in Balacote, Khyber Pakt Paktun Qua Province. Now in twenty
twenty five, this is exactly how the Air Force and
the armed forces had planned it as well. There was
going to be a first wave of strikes against terror
infrastructure on the night of sixth seventh of May, and
then we would absorb their hits through our ad which
(08:44):
is what we did, and then we retaliated, if you remember,
on the eighth with the in daylight, we struck a
number of their military installations including radar sites, and they
again struck back across hitting air basis, then breadth of
India and then finally they did that thing of striking
at Air Force basis with using ballistic missiles, extremely provocative,
(09:08):
which is when the Indian military went in for phase
three of our Sindhur, which was to hammer all of
Pakistan's infrastructure airfields starting from Pakistan occupied Kashmi right down
from the high altitude deserts of pok right down to
the Cholistan deserts of Synth, eighteen hundred kilometers, almost the
(09:31):
length and breadth of Pakistan was struck twenty three minutes.
It is possibly the Indian Air Force's most intense air
campaign conducted in the shortest possible time twenty three minutes.
Targets across such a huge geography, all struck with air
to ground munitions, and the crowning glory of that was
the fact that you had a very solid, almost impenetrable
(09:55):
air defense wall starting from the spot as you mentioned,
the big boys standing at the back to tackle long
range cruise missiles, ballistic missiles coming in at you know,
very high speeds, hypersonic speeds, and then of course right
down to the humble Zoo twenty three and your l
seventy guns and manpads and all of that. So all
of this, as I said, it was, you know, arranged
(10:16):
so beautifully in these layered concentric circles, depending on their
sensory abilities and their engagement kill zones and all that
into a layered multi tired air defense network.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
So that is the secret weapon.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
That India brought in.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
You know, the fact that we.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Had a totally indigenous solution knitting together all of these
diverse platforms, and that was the the X factor in Opsindre.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, I SCCS because
if you remember, there was this photo that came out
a couple of days after the session Ofcities, the surgical masks.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Yes, the masks.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I don't know why were they wearing that, By the way,
do you have any theory to that because sensitive.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
You thought it was like because COVID was still on
a something. It was for anonymity. They want to protect
the air warriors who were there in the middle of
an operation and ongoing military operation, so you would want
to cover the faces of their personnel because you know,
given the kind of face mapping technology that's available, they'll
be able to pick up any of our officers or
working there and then you know, you know, zoom into
(11:20):
where they are and you know, use them to collect
intel or whatever target in whatever way. So that is
what they wanted to protect them. Anonymity is extremely important,
especially when you have an operation that's ongoing.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah, So the men and the women in that photo,
they must have had a hell of a week. Of course, Now,
like you said, we don't want to go too much
in the technicalities of how this intest system works, but
I do want to understand from you, based on your
chats with different people in the establishment, in the setup,
in the military setup, what would the situation have been
(11:53):
like in that room especially. I think I am a
man or a woman from the Air Force sitting at
Meridaska and I see swarm of drones coming in.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
What happens next?
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Is it manual? Is it automated? Because and what's the
response time like when like from the moment you see
it on your REDA screens to the moment a missile
or a gun sort of takes down that threat, whether
it's a missile, whether it's an aircraft, whether it's whether
they're they're drones. What happens in that room that brings
everything together?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
And how do.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
They communicate, not communicate in terms of instructions, but in
terms of ensuring that the response time is as as
quick as possible, for example, and guessing the l seventy
guns would be manually moved somewhere to take on a
thread that's sort of incoming.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
How does that all come together? Well, so.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Interesting question. Now you know how the I C c
S works. Is that basically it is the whole system
is all the airspace is completely mapped and is covered
through our radars and SENSUS airborne, ground based and all
of that. The capabilities of all of these systems are
well known. The radars that we have e W units,
(13:06):
all of these are fed into.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
This I A C c S.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Which is then it's a gigantic eyes and years of
air defense. It's getting inputs from everything. It's from, you know,
from the satellites, ground based sensors, ad radars, air defense radars,
from the army, from the Air Force, sometimes even from
the Navy and civil airspace, so that it creates what
(13:30):
is called a RASP, which is you know, it's an
air situation picture. It is a resultant air situation picture,
which is a real time situation of the air defense
network of the country as it exists. And in a sense,
it would be like a video game where you would
see the host vectors, the target vectors coming towards you,
the enemy's uh you know, vectors either it's a missile
(13:53):
or it's a fighter aircraft, and you have the ability
to immediately direct whichever vector that you have on the
ground to target him, whether it's a missile or it's
a man pads, or it's you know, a gun system.
Whoever is closest and who has the best probability or
the kill shot will take.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Out the threads.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
For instance, you have something called the c A U
S c U A S grid that's the counter unmandarial
System's grade, which is a new technology which is also
being plugged into I A C c S. You also
have AKASH there which is primarily an army focused network,
a smaller version of the I A C c S
which is also again which has links to I A
(14:34):
C c S. All of these, you know, give you
that big rasp the it's a cool terminology, you know,
this resultant air situation picture. And then they, as I said,
they start allocating assets to fire. You know, if if
there is a threat, for instance over other por air base,
so it will be the other poor rare base which
(14:55):
will take the call or the missile defenses around that.
And then looking at the kind of thread also that's
coming in. For instance, if I've got like small drones,
cheap civilian drones, I evaluate the thread firstly, and I
would not fire an S four hundred missileant of course, right,
you will fire something that is within range and which
is like an L seventy gun or you know, even
(15:17):
a man pads possibly something that is You won't use
a you know, sledge hammer to kill a fly, so
you'll use a fly swatter. So I have, say, for instance,
I have low cost drones coming towards Adampur, moving very quickly.
They could be they could be unarmed, but I have
to take the thread down and I immediately allocate, say
(15:39):
a Zoo twenty three battery that is in the vicinity
that opens fire and that neutralizes the threat. If I see,
for instance, in this IICCS, I see a very fast
moving ballistic missile, for instance, and that is approaching one
of my air bases. So I have a Barack eight there,
but I also have the S four hundred that's covering
the thing. Now, given the speed of this style, the
(16:00):
only thing that could take out of an incoming ballistic
missile that's flying at mark ten and mark twelve would
be an S four hundred. So that guy immediately launches
his you know, forty and sixty, which is a massive
three hundred plus kilometer range missile. So it's it's all
horses for courses, and that's what i CCS does. Basically,
(16:22):
it allocates the vector based on the kind of threat
that it's facing, and a lot of it is man
in the loop. Some of it is automated as well.
And eventually you will get to the point where a
lot of these decisions because they will be split second,
you will be faced with massive swarm drones, like literally
tens of thousands of doors coming in to overwhelm all
(16:43):
your systems. So there you will have to automate a
lot of these functions. You would need to have, say
fast firing guns, you need to have ew you need
to have you know, like jammers basically to jam his communications,
or you need to launch your own drone swamps you know,
that is another possible hard kill measure that So this
is literally this is in the future of warfare. The
(17:04):
future of warfare is what we were talking about. Before Nagorno,
Kara bah happened, before Russia, Ukraine happened, before Israel, you know,
Gaza happened. We are in the middle of the future.
The next step is going to be as I mentioned,
this thing of autonomous swarm drones which are flying in
they're talking among themselves, allocating targets and then crashing into
(17:27):
them all knocking them out, dropping ordinance on them. So
this is literally the first you know, new twenty first
century warfare that the Indian military has been exposed to.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
You know, when you were explaining sort of the symphony
with which all these systems come together thanks to the I,
S c S, A tangent just struck my head.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Is US.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
You have Donald Trump as president who's sort of almost
forcing India and several other countries to buy more military
equipment from the US. But the US also is known
to be very rigid about how their systems integrate with
the systems of the of the of the customers to
whom they're selling these weapons to. I remember in depend
(18:11):
in season two we spoke about how I forgot which
Gooing helicoporate was, but that there was a lot of
back and forth between India and US in terms of
what communication equipment that helicopter would carry, because India wanted
it to be Indian so that there would be that
safe space of communications, but the US was like, no,
we don't allow that. We don't allow our systems to
be indicated with your own systems, and there was all
(18:32):
this talk and this this this, this sort of India
was put on a lot of pressure for opting to
buy the Russian AS four hundred. Yeah, So, keeping that
in mind and keeping in mind what you've just explained
about the how India's air defense comes together.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
As as a tangent, do you foresee a situation.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Where India could ever for any American air defense equipment
for the reason.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
That they probably not might not be able to integrate
with our systems.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Well, good question, Togather. You know, Nissam's was on offer
to India at some point, and I believe that you
can't have a stand alone system, so nisams would also
have to be integrated with the iaccs. But you know
the problem here with the Americans is that they don't
like the S four hundred very much because they believe
(19:17):
that one CS four hundred is operational, and now it is,
it's been in service for four years, it's performed exceptionally well,
we believe it's carried out and intercept. There's no formal
confirmation of it except for Prime Minister mo these the
visit and the first time you saw the S four
hundreds in public But the thing is that the Americans
would not want you to operate the S four hundreds
(19:40):
because they see you as a potential customer for the
F thirty five. The F thirty five is a fifth
generation fighter aircraft which is literally going to be the
backbone of all the three services and the Marine Corps,
and they would not want the S four hundred to
basically pick up the signatures of the F thirty five.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
That is one of the reasons.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
So they have deep issues with that, which is why
they've asked Turkey to basically shutter down its S four
hundred missile systems. They can't operate those missile systems because
of the fact that they are an F thirty five customer.
Now we are in that similar situation as well, that
they will not sell you a lot of fighter aircraft
(20:20):
till the time you don't create some kind of safeguard
to ensure that either the S four hundred and the
F thirty five aren't operating in the same airspace, which
is very difficult to imagine, but it is going to
be extremely complicated. I'm aware of the fact that we
have also committed to studying the F thirty five procurement offer,
(20:41):
which the Americans have made to us just this year
when Prime Minister More they visited Washington. But it's a
long way off to my mind, and I think Sindhur
is going to be Operation Sindhur is going to be
the watershed moment because from here on India is going
to decide on its imports. Imports are going to be
a very small tip of the spear, but imports will
(21:04):
be decided based on the behavior of these countries when
we were at war. What are the kinds of statements
that came out from say the United States or any
other country, you know, Because the biggest fear that India
has is that you will be denied the use of
these systems in terms of in times of conflict. And
that is possibly one reason why we haven't looked very
(21:26):
closely at buying American fighter jets. This is what one
bureaucrat told me. He's possibly in a minority because we
have always considered you know, American aircraft as part of
our acquisition process. But somehow, mysteriously, the Americans never finish
as the preferred you know, fighter jet. It's always the French,
(21:50):
for instance, all the Russians, the Raphile being the winner
in that MMRC contest, which was basically shrunk down to
about two squadrons of aircraft. But this is going to
be a problem with US, you know, with Americans when
you're looking at cutting edge American fighter jet technology, for instance,
and we would be very, very concerned about buying American
equipment given the potential that they could be denied to
(22:13):
US in times of war. And if you saw the
statement that President Trump made where he said that I used,
you know, a trade trade as a lever against India
and Pakistan to get them to talk tomorrow. He could
use weapon supplies, and it has been used in the past,
in the sixty and sixty five and in seventy one.
Both times the Americans cut down on the Pakistani supplies
(22:36):
of military gear and the Pakistanis were high and dry.
We of course didn't have too much equipment that was
affected by that. We were affected to a minor extent
after the nineteen ninety eight pokern To nuclear tests. So
from then on we kind of made it a point
not to get too much of American equipment. But that
of course changed after the Indo US nuclear deal. So
(22:57):
there are positives to the relationship to put the United States,
and there are of course, there is the flip side
as well.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I mean, forget times of conflict here, you've also seen
what's happened with the TAGES Mark one, a projector that's
been delayed for more than two years now because of
delays and supplies of the American engines. Though I mean
in that case, there is no evidence to say the
US government is that at fault pers or they are
like sort of you know, you know, pressurizing g not
to not to send those those engines. But I think
that just proves the point that you're trying to trying
(23:26):
to make over. Were there jitters in the Air Force?
And I'll tell you why I'm asking this question because
the I C c S, unlike any other weapon, had
never been tested at this level. So you know, you
can be sure your brumos are going to be bang
on accurate. Because you test one BOS facile, it's enough
to know that tech is solid.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
You can test that one S four hundred system.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
ATTACKCA. You can test one ACAS system to no KiHa,
there's a bounder tig it will it will take it down.
But them all coming together practically, financially, it's just not
possible for you to do that level of trialing and testing.
So this was the first ever time this system was
being used in this at this level in combat.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
I would still in combat, but you know, they've I mean,
these systems are not just you know, switched on when
there's you know, conflict or something. They are extensively used
in every single exercise that the Indian Air Force does.
So they've been used in several exercises over the past
couple of years. There is the watershed was twenty eighteen
when they had this Operation Gagan Shakti, very very intense
(24:32):
series of exercises where the Indian Air Force was kind
of validating its ability to fight on two fronts, how
they would fight it, you know, the number of sorties
they would need to generate, and the fronts they would
have to fight, how they would tackle the Pakistan front,
how they would tackled the China front, and a lot
of this ICCs was key to all all of these exercises.
So to my mind, I think a lot of the learnings,
(24:54):
all a lot of the lessons were already learned there.
But yes, nothing like conflict to actually prove your systems.
And this is what they did with IICCS, and they
possibly I think it's in the second Mark two right now,
and they possibly go on to Mark three as well,
a little more advanced, more systems, more.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
EW jammers and all that.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
So it's been tested trialed over the last couple of years,
especially in all of these exercises post Gagun Shakti. There
was one in nineteen I forget the name of that,
but every such exercise has tested their systems defensive, you know,
because like I said, defensive AD is a very very
key component of offensive airpower.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
One last point on the topic of air defense you
kind of briefly refer to it in between right now,
is the electronic warfare aspect of it.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Now, either I'm not aware of it because perhaps it's
not been widely.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Reported, or it is true that, in fact, not a
lot of EW was used by India for its air defense.
And the reason I want to bring this up is
because over the course of the research for the last
two three seasons of an air defense, I've been coming
a lot lot more about about this technology where basically
you don't even need to fire missiles anymore, drones at
least when you have drones in coming just you know,
(26:06):
if you fired those electro magnetic waves and they sort
of you know, like you know, attack jag and then
but you don't really see a lot of that happening
at least that's what it's not been widely deported.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
So is that the case. And if that is the case,
why is it because the technology is not mature yet.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
No, the technology is evolving for fighting drones, and the
drone technology itself is evolving even as we speak. And
you know, the Russia Ukraine War just tells you that
the speed at which innovation is happening, it's like Friday,
the one side comes up with a problem, a drone
isn't is run into an issue, a defense wall, defense mechanism.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
By Monday, they would have fixed it and they would
be breaching that war.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
And that is how rapidly drone innovation is taking place
in the Russia Ukraine War. And one of the biggest
findings of that war, one of the biggest developments of
that war in the last year has been the use
of wire guided drones. I mean, that's like, you know,
it started with drones that were controlled by a fiber
optic caable. That's your first person view drones controlled with
(27:10):
a fiber optic cable a few kilometers two three kilometers,
so a first person viewed drone became something like a
wire guided anti tank missile, except this is a much
much smarter missile, carries an RPG seven shell underslung and
drives into the target. You can, you know, the operator
can literally steer it into the target, into a window
(27:32):
or a trench of foxhole, into any target that he chooses.
And today you're looking at wire guided FPV drones with
ranges of forty plus kilometers, which means that the drone,
the FPV drone has a spool of fiber opplicable and
the operator is guiding it forty kilometers away. It's a
smart weapons system and one man is able to create
(27:54):
this kind of damage in such depth. And the advantage,
of course of the foc the fiber optic cable is
that these are unjammable. Yes, you know that you're under
attack when you see the drone above you. That's how
quickly it comes in And how do you jam drones
like this? So you know, warfare is constantly evolving, and
when you're in the middle of a conflict, our opsin
(28:17):
door has taken a pause after four days of fighting.
The operation is still on. I'm sure the innovations will happen.
But in Russia Ukraine they've been fighting for it's entered
the fourth year now and they are looking at you know,
almost daily there are battles. I mean now it's the
tempo of conflict has slipped a little, but they are
(28:38):
looking at intense battles where one side is running into
drone walls. There's literally thousands of drones. You don't see
people on the battlefield anymore. You don't see soldiers walking around.
There was a story of one of the soldiers I'm
not sure if he's a Russian and Ukraine, and there
was a clip of him where he says that the
only time I saw a soldier from the other side
(29:00):
was when I had to surrender. The drones have emptied
out the battlefield. You cannot have massed armor, you can't
have concentrated troops, nothing of that sort. It scattered the battlefield.
But in a situation like ours, where it is a
very traditional way of war fighting both India and Pakistan,
all these elements were essentially evolutions, I would call it
(29:24):
of systems that have already existed. There was no Russia
Ukraine war kind of moment that forced us to go
entirely towards drones. In this case, for instance, drones are
an adjunct of conflict. They are not the conflict itself,
like what it's happened on the front, the way the
(29:45):
First World War descended into trench warfare, you know, static
positions and all that. Here it's a bit of drones,
it's a bit of new age tech aid systems and
all that, but a lot of it is legacy systems,
and some of it is innovations like the I C
c S, which is you know, marries all of these
old and new together.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Sandipa, I wanted to talk to you about the escalation matrix,
the escalation ladder is, how is how analysts talk about
it before we get into India, what it did, and
like you were telling me during the break that we
should obviously touch upon how everything basically led to India
calling the nuclear bluff, those those years and decades of
(30:26):
surety that Pakistan had just because we have nukes, they
will not, you know, think of striking our military.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Assets at the very least.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
But before we do that, I want to understand why
is this term escalation ladder such a hot topic among
among strategic and different defense analysts because it was this
this ladder. This ladder was first thought of by by
Herman Khan. He's a cold ar astrategist who used to
work with the Rand Corporation. Then he went on to
(30:55):
set up his own think tank. Uh. He began with
if I'm not wrong, level not Well or drunks of
the Ladder, which he then expanded to forty four. Now something,
you know, when I read those rungs, it seems like
the most obvious thing in the world to me, Like
you do A B does something, then you do this
in response, he does this in response, You do this
in response. It's like how any fight would happen, like
(31:18):
and in even a basic parking dispute, like you know,
someone stretches my car, I get out, he gets out,
He throws a cussword at me, I throw a cussword
at him.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Someone throws a.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Fist And that's how escalations happen. So it seems very obvious.
So then why do you have this very vast body
of work on this? Why do you have so much
academic talk about this? How does it help defense analysts
like you, strategic strategic planners like those in the government
or in the military. How does this theory help, Like,
(31:48):
let's talk about that academic part first before we talk
about what happened with.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Yeah, so you know they now the thing is that
the escalation ladders is primarily a Cold War construct, right.
This was created to understand how conflict would break out
if it did between the Warsaw Pact and NTO. Now,
I mean, you're looking at arsenals that had over ten
thousand nuclear weapons and it was like overkilled to a
(32:13):
degree of you know, ten twenty times they could destroy
the world ten twenty thirty times over that's the kind
of arsenals that they had, you know, amassed during the
Cold War, more than four decades of it. So they
were trying to understand how conflict would break out and
you know where they really needed to intervene and to
kind of make sure that this never spilled out into
(32:35):
anything other than say a proxy war or you know,
conflicts between nuclear weapons states never took place, and certainly
not between the blocks.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
So if you look at it all through the Cold War.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Which would be from nineteen forty five to effectively about
nineteen eighteen nine ninety and to the dissolution of the
Soviet Empire. Most of the wars that were fought were
proxy wars because the Soviets and the Americans, despite the
fact that they had such massive arsenals that didn't make sense,
they were very wise in the sense that they never
(33:06):
sought to fight each other militarily. There was never any
incident on you know, a say, in Europe for instance,
where they were both acutely conscious of the fact that
any conflict would immediately spiral out of control and it
would go out of you know, to a point where
you have people starting to use tactical nukes and stuff
(33:27):
like that. So that's a very complicated system. I think
we should talk over another day, but you know, it
should suffice to say that they were very mindful of
conflicts pilling out of control, which is why tactical nukes
for instance, which is basically battlefield nuclear weapons that you
can use on the battle.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Field.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Commanders would use them. Say, if they saw, you know,
an avalanche of Soviet tanks coming towards them, the NATO
guys would immediately launch a nuclear mortar or a nuclear
artillery gun or something like that. They took those out
of the battlefield. They said that extremely extremely provocative. They
would result in Soviets throwing nuclear weapons and that would
(34:07):
you know, spiral out into a nuclear, all out nuclear exchange.
But you know, coming back to the subcontinent now, where
the arsenals are smaller, the nuclear armed states, both India
and Pakistan share long international boundaries, and of course we
have a long contested boundary with China as well. This
is a trijunction of three nuclear weapons states. It's as
(34:28):
fragile as that. But when it comes to India and Pakistan,
the biggest, you know, the watershed moment for this subcontinent
was the nineteen ninety eight poker In tests where India
first declared itself a nuclear weapons par and then Pakistan
followed suit a few days later. Now, two conventional American
(34:48):
thinkers strategious. There was one particularly famous, one of Indian origin.
I don't want to name him, but he said, you know,
the big thing of Pokern two is the fact that
now India and Pakistan will not have any more wars
right now. He was applying a NATO warsaw paradigm on
the subcontinent, where you have two nuclear arms stags. Of
course they won't go to war. What he discounted was
(35:09):
the possibility of the Pakistan military constantly looking for conflict
below the nuclear threshold. They says that once we have
achieved parity, so called nuclear parity with India, India will
not attack us conventionally with ground forces of the time
they had in nineteen seventy one and dismembered the country.
So if you look at it, the Pakistan nuclear weapons
(35:31):
program in its first phase from the nineteen seventy one
to about the mid eighties, when they actually developed the bomb,
was about protecting the territorial integrity of Pakistan.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Right.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
It was a survival it's a tool for survival. But
later when they got parity, they were embolded. They said,
now India, we are safe from any conventional Indian conventional
attack using the military conventional forces because they're afraid we'll
use the nuclear weapons on them. And operations like Parakram
(36:03):
in two thousand and one may have actually fueled that
theory that look, they came, they mobilized on the border,
they were scared of un nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
And they went back.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
This is possibly what the generals and Rabal Pindi were thinking,
and that is when they began this death so called
death by a thousand cuts, that's terror.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Terror attacks.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
You had, of course Parliament, and then you had the
Mumbai terror attacks of two thousand and six, the train
bombings two thousand and eight, and before that you had
nineteen ninety three, the serial blasts in Mumbai.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
More than two hundred and seventy people were killed in that.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
So they saw this as a means of protecting their
strategic acids, which is the terror groups. So it's the
Pakistan military using the shield of nuclear weapons. That's a
strategic acid to protect the sword of so called non
state actors. Right, So the sword and shield strategy is
what they've been using since Pokern nineteen ninety eight. Now
(36:58):
what happens is that with every attack they're probing our
tolerance levels. So, okay, it's two thousand and one, it's Parliament,
then two thousand and six it's Mumbai, and for some reason,
the generals are obsessed with attacking Mumbai. The Pakistani generals
two thousand and eight, massive spectacular so called terror attack
(37:18):
where the world takes note of these Pakistani non state actors.
But it's all the Pakistan military is doing. And then
they realize that maybe twenty six eleven is a is
a big thing that we can avoid. We should possibly
look at smaller, low level kind of attacks confined to
Kashmir because we don't want to provoke India beyond the point.
(37:40):
And then they start the Kashmir thing. Now what they
don't realize is when the government changes. You have Prime
minister more of these government coming. In twenty fourteen, he's
tested with a couple of terror attacks and you can
see a very distinct pattern of the park military testing
him out through Patan court. First the attack on the
air base in fifteen, and then in twenty sixteen you
(38:01):
have the attack on the army camp in Quri, which
is when the government authorizes these shallow cross border strikes
which are the so called surgical strikes. Twenty nineteen you
have that suicide bombing which kills forty of the CRP
of Javans, and you have for the first time the
government authorizing the use of airpower to strike that one
(38:23):
camp in Kayberpaktun Ballacote, the Jaba top camp one surgical
one air strike against one camp, one target. And in
twenty twenty five you know what happened in Zindu three
phase operation targeting all the terror infrastructure, their military sites
for the first time, and then of course their airfields.
So what the Pakistan military now realizes, to their horror
(38:46):
is if they were probing our red lines, this government
was probing their red lines. So if you look at it,
there's been a gradual pattern of moving up the escalation
ladder where you have that from ground based strikes in
twenty six sixteen to one air strike in twenty nineteen
and massive strikes all across in twenty three minutes eleven
(39:08):
air bases and before that nine targets, nine targets. So
they must be very worried the fact that their nuclear
weapons have not deterred them, right, the convention passed Convention
of nuclear weapons deterring a response by India has not worked.
So the escalation ladders, the dynamics have completely changed. So
(39:29):
if General Musherff thought he was this great commando general
who had discovered space for conventional war below the nuclear threshold,
kargl happens exactly one year after the nuclear tests, and
he's so impoltant he believes that they won't be a
conventional response and you know, India will kind of surrender
all of this territory that we have captured as classic
(39:50):
Pakistan army thinking for you, they throw the first punch
and then they think that all the consequences will take
care of themselves, or the Americans or the Chinese will
come to our rescue. That's always been their strategy. They
are the most tactical military in the world. Their whole
ethos is to throw the first punch somehow, keep fighting
with these tactical responses and when the strategic response hits them,
(40:13):
they go running into the United States and to China
and all that. So, in a sense, this is what
has happened with the escalation matrix. And it is interesting
if you heard that briefing by the three djmos of
the Army, Navy, and the Air Force, where it was
the Naval d who mentioned this escalation ladder that we
have worked out. Now I think this is the first
(40:35):
public confirmation of an escalation matrix that the armed forces
of India have worked out against Pakistan, because I think
the government has figured out, look, there's never going to
be a nuclear war of the kind that we think
that might be if we take care of the following
and those four red lines that were articulated by Pakistan
(40:57):
in about two thousand and one by Talikid why he
is the head of their then head of their Strategic
Plans division, was that they would use nuclear weapons if
they lost a lot of territory, if their military machinery
was destroyed, if India tried to strangulate them economically, or
if they were destabilized internally politically, so they would resort
(41:19):
to nuclear weapon exchange. So the government seems to have
worked out this escalation matrix, this escalation ladder of what
is possible to do without provoking an all out war
or even the use of tactical nuclear weapons. So it's
a constant game. It's a cat and mouse game. So
if you noticed after Parakhrum, when you had this massive
(41:44):
six month mobilization along the border which petered out the
Indian Army had to withdraw. You had a few very
bright generals then going back to the drawing board and saying, hey, listen,
we could have done much better than we did. What
else can we do that will force Pakistan to realize
the cost of, you know, supporting terrorism, And they came
up with the cold Start course st strategy which was
(42:05):
instant thing. Within seventy two hours, you would have an
Indian response along the border, right, and so Pakistan responded
to cold start with a counter cold start, which was
to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield dangerously provocative,
which is you authorize field commanders to use these nuclear
weapons in short range ballistic missiles or rockets. And so
(42:29):
this this kind of thing started playing about. Now, what
has happened in with operations Sindhur is that the government
seems to have had an overview of all the capabilities
that it has at its disposal and has chosen airpower
as its instrument of choice here Right from the get go,
from the first strikes on the eighth of May right
(42:52):
down to sorry, the seventh of me right down to
the third, second and third week, tenth, ninth and tenth,
it was you know, primarily par century. You had army,
You had armories involvement along the loc The army has
also done a lot of work, you know, supporting in
support of these operations. They have carried out some strikes themselves,
(43:12):
but a bulk of the heavy lifting was done by
the Indian Air Force. Now that's another unique point about
this government is that unlike previous governments, it's understood the
uses of coersive airpower. What is your object? What's your
end state? The Pakistan military believes and there is no
terrorism here. I'll be very frank, it is not terrorism
(43:33):
of the way that we see al kay, that terror
which is not a state actor, it's a non state actor.
He's fighting some two thousand year war right against the West.
What we have is the case of an army with
a country which is adopted terror as an instrument of
state policy, with so called non state actors as a
(43:54):
low cost option against India. What the government has done
is to raise the cost of that conflict by saying
that if you think this is a low cost option
for you, please look at all your shattered basis and
your you know infrastructure, your radars, your busted radars and
all of that to make up your mind that no,
(44:14):
this is not a low cost option anymore. The accountants
must be horrified, because I'm sure by now they've had
enough time to you know, tabulate their losses and they've
probably gone back to the generals and said, Sir, I
don't think it's worth it, because we thought we're going
to fight a low cost war. This is cost us
about a year's budget, year's defense budget or whatever the
blow could be. But so that is the whole you know,
(44:38):
effect of this high cost versus low cost thing which
the government has kind of imposed on the Pakistan Army.
So they have chosen airpower as the instrument to deliver
those effects in the future, it could also be the
navy for instance, if you know, that option also remains.
So it has been speculated that the fourth phase or
(45:00):
the fifth phase of operations indoor before the operations were paused,
was a naval strike from Karachi from around the south
for a blockade or but definitely something from the North
Arabian Sea. So this has put you know, the Pakistan
military in a quandary. They don't know where the next
(45:20):
strike could come from. If if it is an operation
which is ongoing which is meant to target you know,
terrorist training camps or deter the Pakistan military. There are
all these options. The whole thing is to enforce good
behavior on the part of the Pakistan military and to
get them to seize and desist from using terrorism. So
that's the whole game plan. I think this government has
(45:41):
understood the way to do it, as opposed to previous
governments who really didn't have any answer to you know,
park sponsorship of terror.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah right.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
You know, if you boil that concept of the escalation
matrix down to those four or five days, three four nights,
I want to know whether you would agree with me
when I sort of speculate or just do guess work.
Is that in the aftermath of the attack, when you
had the India's military establishment and the government set up
(46:14):
coming together planning what to do next, they had factored
in that it's not going to be that one strike.
It's going to be that one strike. Yes, there's gonna
be a response. We are going to respond, They're going
to respond again. So we want to take it to
a level where perhaps we are seen justified as attacking
their military assets without doing it on D one. The
(46:35):
reason I asked that is because I'll tell you something.
On May seventh, I obviously, like you know you and
every other journalist, was woken up from my sleep.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
I rushed to office.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
You had the press confidence had happening at around ten
ten thirteen in the morning. It was the Foreign Secretary
Mystery who had addressed the day became afternoon, and then
towards the evening when I Thakahara, I was going back home,
I was thinking, yeah, I'm not quite sure if this
is really achieved? What the message, what the aim should
have been? I mean, okay, like you said, Balakur was
(47:08):
one camp, one strike, four or five missiles. These were
nine camps, several more missiles. But still, I mean, are
we sure you've sent that message home? I obviously did
not know what was going to come next in the
next few days, so that then, now that I think
about it, you know, seven days after the citization of hostilities,
(47:29):
I think of it this way. Now, was this sort
of wargamed? Was this planned?
Speaker 1 (47:34):
What do you think? Absolutely? Where's the doubt?
Speaker 3 (47:36):
So the escalation ladder actually means that they have wargained
this situation. They've wargained the operations as they would unfold, because,
as the Prime Minister said, it was going to be unprecedented.
Our punishment would be unprecedented, and therefore the response from
Pakistan and the Pakistan military would be equally unprecedented. And
(47:57):
I was asked here in this building by someone very senior,
what the Pakistan military's options, retaliatory options would be.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
This was on the day that we had struck.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
So I said that they would come and they would
attack all our air bases starting from Jamun, Kashmir in
the north right down to.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Gujarat in the south.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
And this is exactly what they did because I was
looking at you know, if you look at Balakot in
nineteen one strike one camp a couple of PGMs. The
Pakistanis responded a few hours later in near one of
our military bases, they dropped PGMs as well. So it
was in a say, if you can call it that proportionate, Now,
(48:37):
if you struck at nine places, they would try to
do the same, you know, because for them it's all
about it. It's all about parity. For them that they
struck nine, we also struck nine all of that, so
then we had to respond to that. So it is
it's like looking at a chessboard and you know, anticipating
the next five moves that if I moved my say,
(48:58):
if I moved my castle here, what will by adversary?
How would he respond? And then how will I respond
to his thing? It's like a game of chess exactly.
So they possibly wargamed it to about five or six
or maybe even more than that before international pressure forced
a cessession of hostilities, and we would have achieved a
lot of what we had set out to do, which
(49:20):
was to basically tell raise the cost of sponsoring terror
for Pakistan. And that escalation ladder seems to have been very,
very mediculously wargamed. They seem to have had the time,
which is why they took their time to respond to Pelgam,
which happened in April twenty second of April, and you
(49:40):
had a response here on the night of sixth of May.
So all of this time was spent in wargaming this,
creating that escalatory ladder so that we weren't caught by
surprise save when Pakistan came and struck our air bases.
So what if he comes and strikes our air bases?
If he does that, which means that he has given
us the right to respond to by a time his
(50:01):
military targets, which is what we did on the second
day and the third wave of the third phase of
the operations. But you know, the important thing there is
that why they would have created the escalation ladder, why
the government of India and the defense officials would have
created it, to my mind, is the fact that for
the first time since nineteen seventy one, we had struck
(50:22):
targets inside Pakistan's Punjab province. Yes, and that's the most
important province to them. It's like seventy percent of their
armies recruited from there. Pakistan is nothing but Punjab with
a couple of Allied provinces.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
That's it. That is the core.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
It is the center of gravity of Pakistan. And if
you attacked terror training camps there, the camps were located
there precisely for this reason. They felt safe. They never
thought they would be struck the way we struck them
on the seventh of me And once we struck them,
we had crossed a red line attacking targets in Punjab
(50:58):
province and therefore the government had to pay to the response,
and which is why you had this civil Uh, you know,
the drills, the emergency drills for the citizens. So that
is the it's all part of the escalation land. And
this is something that we've not seen in a long time.
There is prossibly two generations of Indians who have not
seen a raid, sirens or seen these drills and all that,
(51:20):
not since the seventy one war. So it was the
government kind of anticipating that these would be the responses,
and so it's very important. It's part of planning. It's
good staff work, good diligent military officials, and of course
politicians have sat around a table and they've decided General
what are my options? Or Air Marshall, ar Chief Marshall,
what are my options? What do I have? That shows
(51:41):
you politico military planning of the highest order. And this
is something that we've not seen very often. We're always
criticized that every time the military comes with an option,
the political class they don't exercise that option because there
is no ability to take that decision, that tough decision
make that you know that call do I strike now,
(52:02):
or do I strike later? Or do I not strike
at all? Which is when Prime Minism and mohun see
the Air Force said that you give me the location
of the terror training camps. That's what a Chief Marshall
Farley major tots that he said. I just went to
the government and said, you give me the location the
terror training camp. My jets are going to be air
on we will knock out the camps. And they could
not get the locations of those camps. They didn't have
(52:25):
intel they didn't have a ground in test, which is
so important. This time they did and you know the
results are you for you to see nine strikes on
terror camps?
Speaker 1 (52:35):
Right?
Speaker 3 (52:36):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (52:36):
One more point? One more point on this on this
topic is.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
The red lines of decision making within that escalation matrix.
I'll simplify it. So, what is that red line for
let's say the tactical army commander on the ground by
you can do this much in response to when they
attack you to get your okay from your boss? Similarly,
what is that red line for the Air force chief?
Speaker 1 (53:02):
So the night of May ninth and.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
Tenth, I think was the most intense fighting between two sides.
You had Pakistan launching its counter attack, it's official counterattack.
Speaker 1 (53:11):
The days before that.
Speaker 2 (53:12):
Was just drone swamps sent across the across the across
the ivy. But you had the Pakistan launching their their
accounter attack propper there also, give it, give it a name.
That very night the Air Force truck back. It wasn't KiHa,
it was that very night. So at what point is
it key okay? Pakistan is doing this, doing this, doing this,
(53:33):
Does the Air Force chief go oh go attack their
basis or does he have to go to the PM
because in India, unlike in Pakistan, you have the government
that is supreme and the government of the day decides
what military action you take. So for the Air force chief,
for the Army chief, for the Navy chief, what is
that line beyond which they have to seek approval or
seek okay from the Prime Minister or the government.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
Can we do this because this is going to lead
to this by the.
Speaker 3 (53:57):
Way, yes, So the Prime Minister said that he is
author is just commanders to do whatever is they see fit.
But the point is that no action by the Indian
armed forces is taken without looping in the politicians, without
consulting them. Of course, because we are a responsible democracy
and the military is an organ of the state, it
(54:18):
is not the state as it is in Pakistan. So
to my mind, all of these decisions would have been
with the approval of the ccs, including the Prime Minister
and the Defense Minister. All of these decisions, whether it
is to cross over and strike military infrastructure, that that
would have been a very very crucial decision. And the
fact is that it had to happen in a matter
(54:40):
of hours, and both of those strikes, if you see
on the eighth and on the tenth, the seventh, you
had the first strikes against the targets on the eighth,
and then you had the next set of strikes on
the tenth. Both of these would have the CCS on
the loop and be authorized by the Cabinet Committee on
(55:01):
Security because or these would have already been pre arranged
and those approvals would have been given that if they
crossed this particular thing, you're authorized to take the following action. Yeah,
so you've wor gamed it and you have looked at
the escalation matrix that you will respond proportionately if he
does this.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
This is what you're going to do.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
And slowly it started going up the nuclear ladder, the
escalation ladder, till the time that it reached a point
when Pakistan, we believe, fired ballistic missiles at US.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
And that was deeply.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
Provocative because, as I was saying to you earlier, no
nuclear weapons state has ever fired a ballistic missile at
another nuclear weapons state, or even used air force for
that matter, for fear that these could be seen as
weapons launch. Nuclear weapons launched one side is decided to
nukee the other side, and this is what Pakistan seems
(55:51):
to have done on the ninth, which is why they
fired a short range ballistic missile the FATA two. We've
seen fragments of at least one of those missiles, which
the government has very interestingly called a high spile strike,
which is they wanted to downplay the whole you know,
the impact of this not alarm the rest of the world,
(56:14):
but the message that was sent out by striking at
Chaklala and Sargodha air bases, and these are the old
names of these air bases, of course, nur Khan and
mushaff were to tell the pakistanis that we are not
deterred by the fact that you fired ballistic missile. If
you've crossed the line, we have something else coming. So
which is one of the reasons why we struck so
(56:34):
emphatically across the geography of Pakistan, including Sargodha and Chaklala,
which I never thought we would ever strike. You know
that that is that's a huge red line that we
crossed and which might have frightened the entire Pakistani military
establishment because all of their notions of deterrence and all
of that, you know, deterring us through nuclear weapons and
(56:55):
you know, all of those past precedents, all that was
thrown to the winds and the cells landed there with
pinpoint precision sending out a message. So that's what the
escalation matrixes. And this I think is a very very
good sign of the fact that we are seeing politico
military synergy of a very high order room and.
Speaker 2 (57:16):
Also a tri services energy of a very high order.
But I think that's also a topic for another episode,
because that's quite a vast topic.
Speaker 3 (57:24):
Right.
Speaker 1 (57:24):
One last point on this episode.
Speaker 2 (57:26):
Oh, by the way, good reference to the high speed missile,
because I've always wanted in that press comprisci which miss
that in the world is loose speed because it's in
the missiles supposed to be high speed in the first place.
Speaker 3 (57:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (57:38):
But last point on this on this episode, the Armed
Forces wing that will have felt quite left out the
Indian Navy, I would I want to know again, this
is guesswork from me. Do you think it's because of
something that Vice Admiral a and promote the referred to
in one of the briefings is that he basically ended
(57:59):
up saying our superiority when it comes to navy versus
navy is far, far, far extreme right, I'm not so.
I know, the Indian Army is better than the Pakistani Army.
The Indian Air Force to an extent also is better
than the Pakistani Army Pakistani Air Force. So the Pakistani
Air Force seems to have some high tech jets with them,
we have to give them that. But the Navy, when
(58:21):
you compare these two services, I think it is far
far superior to the Pakistan Pakistan Navy. So do you
think that by using using the Indian Navy in any form,
whether there is to blockade the Karachi Port economy, basically
threatening Pakistan's economy, or even fire missiles at at Karachi Port,
that would be dramatically moving your escalation added directly from
(58:42):
zero to ten. And that's perhaps why you do not
want to use your navy until you really, really really
reach that level.
Speaker 3 (58:49):
And you really have to do you have to say
about I think, you know, it would all depend on
the kind of UH response that we would get from
the Pakistanis. And I think what they did by five
ballisticness Hales was deeply provocative. They chose to respond to
that provocation using the air force again, which was the
strikes against the air bases and for all you know,
(59:10):
the next phase would possibly have been from the sea.
Like I mentioned, it could possibly have been the navy
as well. You would have naval warships firing Brahmas from
the south. And this was I think, yeah, well, maybe
there is an element of the navy being left out
of the conflict because it was the cessation of hostilities
(59:30):
happened just as phase three had ended, and you had
a lot of you know, the President Trump claiming credit
for arranging that so called ceasefire, which is not a ceasefire,
by the way, a cessation of operations, a pause and
not halt. So the fact is that, yes, of course,
the Indian Navy, you know, it enjoys enormous overmatch as
(59:55):
compared to the Pakistan Navy. Pakistan Navy is competent, it's
creating a lot of assets, but when it comes to
comparisons with the Indian Navy, they might as well be
in Karachi Port or you know, be hiding because the
Indian Navy has more missiles than Pakistan has warships. Wow,
so that is I mean, it is over It is
(01:00:17):
like a super heavyweight boxer against say a bantamweight or
a flyweight there's no match. And this is something that
the Indian Navy has been building up very carefully over
the last couple of years because it is now looking
at the China threat as well emerging into the Indian Ocean,
so which is why they're preparing for a two front
maritime theater as well. In addition to Pakistan, they have
(01:00:39):
to look at China, so there is a huge overmatch there.
But yes, it would all depend on the means that
the military that the government would choose to send that
message out to the Pakistan military. In this case, they
seem to have chosen the army and of course the
air force. The next time it could well be the Navy's.
Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
Turned right, Great Sundep. Just two quick final questions.
Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
This is something that I do on this podcast is
when we reach the end of the episode, just like
very two questions that have sort of brief answers that
satisfy my producer Cltiques need to give him content that
he can then use to promote the episode on different platforms.
So question number one is something it might sounds silly
to someone like you, someone who follows the world of
(01:01:23):
defense so well, but it's something that honestly people on
the news slore have been wondering, in this day of
first GPS, satellite coordinates, night vision, et cetera, et cetera,
what advantage does fighting in the night provide, Because, like
we spoke about, apart from that one, I think May eight,
if I'm not wrong, it was it was all the strikes,
(01:01:43):
whether it was from Pakistani attempts or Indian strikes, they
happened only at night.
Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
What's the reason for this in this day and age.
Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
Well, striking at night is you know, it's always been
advantages throughout history, and it's not so much about the
fact that there is light or there's no light. That
of course is a major factor, but the fact is
that it's also human endurance. Human endurance is the alertness
is the lowest post midnight. You know, when it's two,
(01:02:13):
two am, three am. You know, your reflexes tend to
be slower, even if you're up all night, I mean,
you're very alert, you've been rested, and all your faculties
tend to be a little you know, duller in the
early hours of the day, and which is why a
lot of these attacks are chosen for that pre dawn attacks,
(01:02:35):
and they are the most effective. Most attacks usually happen
at around that time because you have the benefit of darkness.
You're attacking at night when you cannot visually sport the adversary,
but you're also attacking in a time when his faculties
are at the.
Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Lowest, right and final one.
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Karana Hills, Now, sand just like warn you, this is
a podcast so you can be yourself. You can just
be like, you know, I'm just gonna say what I
think without having to worry about because this podcast is
not supposed to be reporting of what's happened.
Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
This podcast is not supposed to be like this.
Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
We know for a fact this is about you, your
experience and your gut feeling about what what what what
it means For people who don't know, There's been a
lot of speculation on social media that among the places
India hit was this place called Karana Hills, around seven
kilometers away from an air base. India actually hit Sagoda
or the Mushaf Airways. The Indian Air Force was asked
(01:03:33):
about this at the official press conference, Air Marshall Party
replied with a smirk on his face, saying that oh,
I didn't even know what was there at Karana his
thank you for telling me that, but maybe did not
hit that, but people so that's smirk on his face
and said there's something in a smirk which is not
making sense. Is this just too much speculation and what
do you what is your gut feeling about did India
(01:03:55):
end up striking Keran Hills, which, by the way, nine
percent is probably home to some, if not all, not all,
definitely some of Pakistan's nuclear weapons equipment.
Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
Right, so, we know the fact that the Karana Hills complex,
it is one of the most sensitive strategic locations in Pakistan.
It's been so since the early eighties when they had
their subcritical tests there as you know in nineteen eighty three.
That's also where they stored their M eleven missiles. And
in the last decade or so, it's become those tunnels
have been converted into a storage site, you know, special
(01:04:28):
weapons storage site and extremely sensitive for the Pakistani military.
If the Pakistan is supposed to have about one hundred
and seventeen hundred and eighty warheads, I would imagine at
least half of them would be stored in these Karana
Hills complex. Now, as for the explosions in Karana Hills,
there are there are two blasts which the India Today
(01:04:52):
team has geode located right down to where they say
they were, right the entrance to the Karani Hills complex.
Now the Indian Air Force has of course denied it.
A Marshall Party with a smirk on his face, said
he had nothing to say about that, or we didn't strike.
But there were two explosions. So like you have those
(01:05:15):
unknown gunmen driving around and shooting all these terrorists and handlers,
you have unknown explosions as well. Interesting, so this is
something that you know, it's just the jury still out
on what happened. Who triggered off those two blasts? Was
it our missiles, was it our PGMs? Was it Pakistan?
(01:05:36):
Was it Pakistani military themselves who triggered off those blasts
to try and you know, try and tell the Americans, hey, listen,
we are under attack. That's you thought, I yeah, I
wouldn't discount it on their point. I thought, actually, yes,
they are capable of doing anything. They have fooled the
Americans for twenty years, right. They ran with the hairs
and they hunted with the hounds. They were helping the
(01:05:56):
Taliban and al Qaeda at the same time, hunting the
Taliban and the al Qaeda. So a military that has
managed these subterfuges, I mean, I wouldn't put anything past them,
So it could well be the Pakistan military. Who knows
that's the theory.
Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
I did not hear, but now that you say it, man,
that's quite plausible. Actually, great San, the fantastic chat and
loved having you. I knew back then when we planned
in our defense that it would be great to chat
with you about stuff to do with defense. And three
years later, two and a half years later, I stand
proven corrected because that was the wrong phrases, and three
(01:06:34):
years later I stand I was right basically. So a
great chat. I hope you had fun. Absolutely, it's delightful,
and I think I hope we can have you more
on this on this podcast and we can talk because
this is just think the beginning of when it comes
to decoding India's response to operations two part to help
attack to Pakistan to Pakistan military support for terrorism. Because
(01:06:55):
there's so many different aspects standards to this. For example,
how how was the Indian army all along the Lysia
right now? Because you have to imagine that is something
that must have also been playing in the back of
the head of the community planners. What is China doing
what they might end up do here in this conflict?
So I think that's something we'll discuss more in the
upcoming episodes. But till then, that's it. Thank you so
much and deep and thanks as always to what my
(01:07:17):
producer will do and to all our listeners and viewers.
Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
That's it for this week's Defense Toes. For more, tune
in next week.
Speaker 4 (01:07:22):
Bie, do you sometimes get frustrated choosing what to eat
for diabetes management while stopping yourself from eating That chocolate
pudding is good?
Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
But is it really enough?
Speaker 4 (01:07:42):
This month, Health Wealth will be doing a special podcast
on World Diabetes Day, which is the fourteenth of November.
Tune in and discover with me what nutrients diabetics should
be having and how to supplement your diet for your
long term well being. You can catch episode on our website, YouTube, Apple, Spotify,
(01:08:04):
and other audio streaming platforms.
This is India Today Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Welcome to season three of In Our Defense, the podcast
that takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
Dave Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
to decode all things to do with India security and
explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for
(00:27):
stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
This is In Our Defense.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
It's been a bit over seven days now since India
and Pakistan had a pause in their fighting that was
triggered in the aftermath of operations Indur. In our Defense
was away for a while because of things that were happening.
It was just too hectic for us at the newsroom,
away covering the events and trying to make sense of
it in the moment. And on this episode I have
with me Sandy Punnitan, a veteran of defense journalism and
(01:00):
in my view, one of the foremost defense reporters right
now in the field. And Sandiv I don't know if
you know this, but In Our Defense originally was designed
around you. It was supposed to me as the host.
They've and you were supposed to be the guest.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yes, yes, but things could not work out back then,
so we had a bishik Pala in season one, and
then in season two we had Shivaru and now I
finally managed to do what this podcast was supposed to
start with, got you on the on the hot.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Thank you, thank you, Thanks for getting me on your
hot seat and on your show.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah, it's a real honor.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Yeah, for our listeners and yours. Sandi has around over
over thirty years of experience. We're not wrong covering Defense
twenty two or a round of which have been with
Today the Group, in the magazine before that, If I'm
not wrong, you were with the Express, and most recently
you were with the TV nine group, So a podcast
for you from print to I think you've also been
(02:02):
on TV for the last few days, by the way,
every day, not to you know. I remember back in
the day when you were with us with the group.
I used to show up on TV once in a
while whenever something happened. But for the last few days,
almost daily you've been on TV. So it's been quite
the change of setups for you.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
The nature of conflict as well. It's fast rapid, intense,
short duration.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So on this episode, Sandiepai wanted to focus and sort
of decode with your expertise, with your knowledge, the India's
reaction when it comes to those four or five days
of operations Indur because there are many many different aspects
to the entire operation itself. You have the first strike
on the night of May seven that took out nine
terror linked sites in Pakistan and Pakistan Kubat Kashmir. But
(02:48):
I want to focus instead more about what happened after that,
the escalation, the escalation made trix so to speak, and
how did India perform at those levels, what happened behind
the scenes. I mean, you will know some of it
through your sources, but you can also guess a lot
of it because of your experience covering defense. So you
would be able to know, you would be able to say,
you know, I don't know if that but exactly is
(03:10):
what happened, but that probably is what happened, which is
what we want on this podcast. Let's start with the
air defense because I think those four or five days
have shown that the Indian air defense was.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Completely completely on point.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
I don't think a single projectile sort of was able
to per penetrate it. There was this one off incident,
if I'm not wrong, in Punjab, where an arm drone
sort of crashed. What we know is it was a
debris It had already been kind of taken out by
one of the air defense missiles, but then at that
debris fell on.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
A house, leading to some injuries.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
But that was the only incident that we're aware of
where any Pakistani projectile was able to penetrate the shell.
On season two of An in Our Defense, we had
an entire episode on air defense and we'll have a
link to that in the show notes for people who
want to understand how India's air defensis structured. But for
a brief sort of a sort of a crash course,
It's like you know concentric circles. You have a small circle,
(04:06):
then you have a larger circle, then you have a
larger circle, then you have the largest circle. So at
the outermost layer you have the S four hundred, the
legendary esp on hundred Russian origin. Then you have the
middle layer where you have the AKA sam surface the missiles,
you have the Israeli barricade missiles. Then you have the
short range systems, the Spider, the QR SAM and then
(04:26):
you have the extremely short rage. This would be like
the battle specific the battle field specific air defence, the
man pats, the L seventy four fours guns, the Zoo
twenty three guns, uh and more. That's a crash course
from you. I want to know what was it X factor,
this air defense, it coming together? How did we manage
(04:49):
day after day for those three four nights rather to
ensure that nothing, nothing at all across through?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Well, good question, Dave. And you know, so.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
You've just named a whole panopoly of defense systems, from
the Quadra to the Barack eight and the S four
hundred and the man pads and L seventy. These are
systems manufactured by three or four countries, some of them indigenous,
acquired over several decades, for five decades. And you know,
(05:22):
to a casual viewer, it would appear to be chaos.
It's anarchy, right, But there's a system that knits all
of these together and which puts them puts every object
on a chessboard. Everything has a task, right, one is
upon the other, one is the queen.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
The S four hundred.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Possibly be the queen because it's so multifarous. It is
such a powerful asset. So it's like a chessboard. The
chessboard here is the IACCS, the Indian Air Forces Integrated
Air Combat Command and Control System, which was set up
something three decades ago. And the start point of this
(06:03):
was when you had the Purulia arms drop. Yes you
know about that very famous thing of that Antono aircraft
coming in showering weapons in West Bengal, making not one
but two entries into Indian airspace.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
That was literally the wake up call.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
For the Indian Air Force and they realized that, hey, listen,
we need to set up a system that addresses air
defense threats like this. And that is when the slow
process started to come about of knitting all of these
diverse assets air defense capabilities, radar, civil, commercial, military, all
of them into one network. And that is where IICCS
(06:37):
comes in. And it's one of the most secret and
very less spoken about capabilities. I know where the base is,
for instance, few of us have been privileged to visit
it while in the on the beat. But it's best
that we leave these out because, I mean, this is
something that you don't want to talk about.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
These capabilities.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
These are strategic capabilities and these have actually kind of
risen to the occasion when it was demanded of them.
So air defense is really important because as you have
offensive air power, a very critical component of offensive air
power is your air defense network, because you not only
have to have the ability to inflict punishment on the
(07:17):
adversary using offensive air power, but you also should have
the shields that will protect you from his retaliation. So
that is essentially the two components of this. You have
the offensive air power network with which is primarily cruise
missiles BrahMos and air launched weapons, the fighter aircraft squadrons
and all of that, and you have this very competent,
(07:38):
capable AD network. So what this escalation ladder that was
planned by these forces saw the Air Force inflicting the
first wave of strikes which they did on the seventh
of May as part of Obsindhu. The first wave the
AD network is meant to absorb Pakistan's retaliation. Now in
twenty nineteen as well, saw the operation that they launched.
(08:01):
They called it swift Retort, which is to respond within
hours to an IF attack on Pakistan, which is what
happened in Balacote on the twenty sixth of February where
you had for the first time since the nineteen seventy
one war, the Indian Air Force crossing into Pakistan, Pakistani territory,
into their airspace and dropping those PGMs on that camp
(08:23):
in Balacote, Khyber Pakt Paktun Qua Province. Now in twenty
twenty five, this is exactly how the Air Force and
the armed forces had planned it as well. There was
going to be a first wave of strikes against terror
infrastructure on the night of sixth seventh of May, and
then we would absorb their hits through our ad which
(08:44):
is what we did, and then we retaliated, if you remember,
on the eighth with the in daylight, we struck a
number of their military installations including radar sites, and they
again struck back across hitting air basis, then breadth of
India and then finally they did that thing of striking
at Air Force basis with using ballistic missiles, extremely provocative,
(09:08):
which is when the Indian military went in for phase
three of our Sindhur, which was to hammer all of
Pakistan's infrastructure airfields starting from Pakistan occupied Kashmi right down
from the high altitude deserts of pok right down to
the Cholistan deserts of Synth, eighteen hundred kilometers, almost the
(09:31):
length and breadth of Pakistan was struck twenty three minutes.
It is possibly the Indian Air Force's most intense air
campaign conducted in the shortest possible time twenty three minutes.
Targets across such a huge geography, all struck with air
to ground munitions, and the crowning glory of that was
the fact that you had a very solid, almost impenetrable
(09:55):
air defense wall starting from the spot as you mentioned,
the big boys standing at the back to tackle long
range cruise missiles, ballistic missiles coming in at you know,
very high speeds, hypersonic speeds, and then of course right
down to the humble Zoo twenty three and your l
seventy guns and manpads and all of that. So all
of this, as I said, it was, you know, arranged
(10:16):
so beautifully in these layered concentric circles, depending on their
sensory abilities and their engagement kill zones and all that
into a layered multi tired air defense network.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
So that is the secret weapon.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
That India brought in.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
You know, the fact that we.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Had a totally indigenous solution knitting together all of these
diverse platforms, and that was the the X factor in Opsindre.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, I SCCS because
if you remember, there was this photo that came out
a couple of days after the session Ofcities, the surgical masks.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Yes, the masks.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I don't know why were they wearing that, By the way,
do you have any theory to that because sensitive.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
You thought it was like because COVID was still on
a something. It was for anonymity. They want to protect
the air warriors who were there in the middle of
an operation and ongoing military operation, so you would want
to cover the faces of their personnel because you know,
given the kind of face mapping technology that's available, they'll
be able to pick up any of our officers or
working there and then you know, you know, zoom into
(11:20):
where they are and you know, use them to collect
intel or whatever target in whatever way. So that is
what they wanted to protect them. Anonymity is extremely important,
especially when you have an operation that's ongoing.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah, So the men and the women in that photo,
they must have had a hell of a week. Of course, Now,
like you said, we don't want to go too much
in the technicalities of how this intest system works, but
I do want to understand from you, based on your
chats with different people in the establishment, in the setup,
in the military setup, what would the situation have been
(11:53):
like in that room especially. I think I am a
man or a woman from the Air Force sitting at
Meridaska and I see swarm of drones coming in.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
What happens next?
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Is it manual? Is it automated? Because and what's the
response time like when like from the moment you see
it on your REDA screens to the moment a missile
or a gun sort of takes down that threat, whether
it's a missile, whether it's an aircraft, whether it's whether
they're they're drones. What happens in that room that brings
everything together?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
And how do.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
They communicate, not communicate in terms of instructions, but in
terms of ensuring that the response time is as as
quick as possible, for example, and guessing the l seventy
guns would be manually moved somewhere to take on a
thread that's sort of incoming.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
How does that all come together? Well, so.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Interesting question. Now you know how the I C c
S works. Is that basically it is the whole system
is all the airspace is completely mapped and is covered
through our radars and SENSUS airborne, ground based and all
of that. The capabilities of all of these systems are
well known. The radars that we have e W units,
(13:06):
all of these are fed into.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
This I A C c S.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Which is then it's a gigantic eyes and years of
air defense. It's getting inputs from everything. It's from, you know,
from the satellites, ground based sensors, ad radars, air defense radars,
from the army, from the Air Force, sometimes even from
the Navy and civil airspace, so that it creates what
(13:30):
is called a RASP, which is you know, it's an
air situation picture. It is a resultant air situation picture,
which is a real time situation of the air defense
network of the country as it exists. And in a sense,
it would be like a video game where you would
see the host vectors, the target vectors coming towards you,
the enemy's uh you know, vectors either it's a missile
(13:53):
or it's a fighter aircraft, and you have the ability
to immediately direct whichever vector that you have on the
ground to target him, whether it's a missile or it's
a man pads, or it's you know, a gun system.
Whoever is closest and who has the best probability or
the kill shot will take.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Out the threads.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
For instance, you have something called the c A U
S c U A S grid that's the counter unmandarial
System's grade, which is a new technology which is also
being plugged into I A C c S. You also
have AKASH there which is primarily an army focused network,
a smaller version of the I A C c S
which is also again which has links to I A
(14:34):
C c S. All of these, you know, give you
that big rasp the it's a cool terminology, you know,
this resultant air situation picture. And then they, as I said,
they start allocating assets to fire. You know, if if
there is a threat, for instance over other por air base,
so it will be the other poor rare base which
(14:55):
will take the call or the missile defenses around that.
And then looking at the kind of thread also that's
coming in. For instance, if I've got like small drones,
cheap civilian drones, I evaluate the thread firstly, and I
would not fire an S four hundred missileant of course, right,
you will fire something that is within range and which
is like an L seventy gun or you know, even
(15:17):
a man pads possibly something that is You won't use
a you know, sledge hammer to kill a fly, so
you'll use a fly swatter. So I have, say, for instance,
I have low cost drones coming towards Adampur, moving very quickly.
They could be they could be unarmed, but I have
to take the thread down and I immediately allocate, say
(15:39):
a Zoo twenty three battery that is in the vicinity
that opens fire and that neutralizes the threat. If I see,
for instance, in this IICCS, I see a very fast
moving ballistic missile, for instance, and that is approaching one
of my air bases. So I have a Barack eight there,
but I also have the S four hundred that's covering
the thing. Now, given the speed of this style, the
(16:00):
only thing that could take out of an incoming ballistic
missile that's flying at mark ten and mark twelve would
be an S four hundred. So that guy immediately launches
his you know, forty and sixty, which is a massive
three hundred plus kilometer range missile. So it's it's all
horses for courses, and that's what i CCS does. Basically,
(16:22):
it allocates the vector based on the kind of threat
that it's facing, and a lot of it is man
in the loop. Some of it is automated as well.
And eventually you will get to the point where a
lot of these decisions because they will be split second,
you will be faced with massive swarm drones, like literally
tens of thousands of doors coming in to overwhelm all
(16:43):
your systems. So there you will have to automate a
lot of these functions. You would need to have, say
fast firing guns, you need to have ew you need
to have you know, like jammers basically to jam his communications,
or you need to launch your own drone swamps you know,
that is another possible hard kill measure that So this
is literally this is in the future of warfare. The
(17:04):
future of warfare is what we were talking about. Before Nagorno,
Kara bah happened, before Russia, Ukraine happened, before Israel, you know,
Gaza happened. We are in the middle of the future.
The next step is going to be as I mentioned,
this thing of autonomous swarm drones which are flying in
they're talking among themselves, allocating targets and then crashing into
(17:27):
them all knocking them out, dropping ordinance on them. So
this is literally the first you know, new twenty first
century warfare that the Indian military has been exposed to.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
You know, when you were explaining sort of the symphony
with which all these systems come together thanks to the I,
S c S, A tangent just struck my head.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Is US.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
You have Donald Trump as president who's sort of almost
forcing India and several other countries to buy more military
equipment from the US. But the US also is known
to be very rigid about how their systems integrate with
the systems of the of the of the customers to
whom they're selling these weapons to. I remember in depend
(18:11):
in season two we spoke about how I forgot which
Gooing helicoporate was, but that there was a lot of
back and forth between India and US in terms of
what communication equipment that helicopter would carry, because India wanted
it to be Indian so that there would be that
safe space of communications, but the US was like, no,
we don't allow that. We don't allow our systems to
be indicated with your own systems, and there was all
(18:32):
this talk and this this this, this sort of India
was put on a lot of pressure for opting to
buy the Russian AS four hundred. Yeah, So, keeping that
in mind and keeping in mind what you've just explained
about the how India's air defense comes together.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
As as a tangent, do you foresee a situation.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Where India could ever for any American air defense equipment
for the reason.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
That they probably not might not be able to integrate
with our systems.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Well, good question, Togather. You know, Nissam's was on offer
to India at some point, and I believe that you
can't have a stand alone system, so nisams would also
have to be integrated with the iaccs. But you know
the problem here with the Americans is that they don't
like the S four hundred very much because they believe
(19:17):
that one CS four hundred is operational, and now it is,
it's been in service for four years, it's performed exceptionally well,
we believe it's carried out and intercept. There's no formal
confirmation of it except for Prime Minister mo these the
visit and the first time you saw the S four
hundreds in public But the thing is that the Americans
would not want you to operate the S four hundreds
(19:40):
because they see you as a potential customer for the
F thirty five. The F thirty five is a fifth
generation fighter aircraft which is literally going to be the
backbone of all the three services and the Marine Corps,
and they would not want the S four hundred to
basically pick up the signatures of the F thirty five.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
That is one of the reasons.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
So they have deep issues with that, which is why
they've asked Turkey to basically shutter down its S four
hundred missile systems. They can't operate those missile systems because
of the fact that they are an F thirty five customer.
Now we are in that similar situation as well, that
they will not sell you a lot of fighter aircraft
(20:20):
till the time you don't create some kind of safeguard
to ensure that either the S four hundred and the
F thirty five aren't operating in the same airspace, which
is very difficult to imagine, but it is going to
be extremely complicated. I'm aware of the fact that we
have also committed to studying the F thirty five procurement offer,
(20:41):
which the Americans have made to us just this year
when Prime Minister More they visited Washington. But it's a
long way off to my mind, and I think Sindhur
is going to be Operation Sindhur is going to be
the watershed moment because from here on India is going
to decide on its imports. Imports are going to be
a very small tip of the spear, but imports will
(21:04):
be decided based on the behavior of these countries when
we were at war. What are the kinds of statements
that came out from say the United States or any
other country, you know, Because the biggest fear that India
has is that you will be denied the use of
these systems in terms of in times of conflict. And
that is possibly one reason why we haven't looked very
(21:26):
closely at buying American fighter jets. This is what one
bureaucrat told me. He's possibly in a minority because we
have always considered you know, American aircraft as part of
our acquisition process. But somehow, mysteriously, the Americans never finish
as the preferred you know, fighter jet. It's always the French,
(21:50):
for instance, all the Russians, the Raphile being the winner
in that MMRC contest, which was basically shrunk down to
about two squadrons of aircraft. But this is going to
be a problem with US, you know, with Americans when
you're looking at cutting edge American fighter jet technology, for instance,
and we would be very, very concerned about buying American
equipment given the potential that they could be denied to
(22:13):
US in times of war. And if you saw the
statement that President Trump made where he said that I used,
you know, a trade trade as a lever against India
and Pakistan to get them to talk tomorrow. He could
use weapon supplies, and it has been used in the past,
in the sixty and sixty five and in seventy one.
Both times the Americans cut down on the Pakistani supplies
(22:36):
of military gear and the Pakistanis were high and dry.
We of course didn't have too much equipment that was
affected by that. We were affected to a minor extent
after the nineteen ninety eight pokern To nuclear tests. So
from then on we kind of made it a point
not to get too much of American equipment. But that
of course changed after the Indo US nuclear deal. So
(22:57):
there are positives to the relationship to put the United States,
and there are of course, there is the flip side
as well.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I mean, forget times of conflict here, you've also seen
what's happened with the TAGES Mark one, a projector that's
been delayed for more than two years now because of
delays and supplies of the American engines. Though I mean
in that case, there is no evidence to say the
US government is that at fault pers or they are
like sort of you know, you know, pressurizing g not
to not to send those those engines. But I think
that just proves the point that you're trying to trying
(23:26):
to make over. Were there jitters in the Air Force?
And I'll tell you why I'm asking this question because
the I C c S, unlike any other weapon, had
never been tested at this level. So you know, you
can be sure your brumos are going to be bang
on accurate. Because you test one BOS facile, it's enough
to know that tech is solid.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
You can test that one S four hundred system.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
ATTACKCA. You can test one ACAS system to no KiHa,
there's a bounder tig it will it will take it down.
But them all coming together practically, financially, it's just not
possible for you to do that level of trialing and testing.
So this was the first ever time this system was
being used in this at this level in combat.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
I would still in combat, but you know, they've I mean,
these systems are not just you know, switched on when
there's you know, conflict or something. They are extensively used
in every single exercise that the Indian Air Force does.
So they've been used in several exercises over the past
couple of years. There is the watershed was twenty eighteen
when they had this Operation Gagan Shakti, very very intense
(24:32):
series of exercises where the Indian Air Force was kind
of validating its ability to fight on two fronts, how
they would fight it, you know, the number of sorties
they would need to generate, and the fronts they would
have to fight, how they would tackle the Pakistan front,
how they would tackled the China front, and a lot
of this ICCs was key to all all of these exercises.
So to my mind, I think a lot of the learnings,
(24:54):
all a lot of the lessons were already learned there.
But yes, nothing like conflict to actually prove your systems.
And this is what they did with IICCS, and they
possibly I think it's in the second Mark two right now,
and they possibly go on to Mark three as well,
a little more advanced, more systems, more.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
EW jammers and all that.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
So it's been tested trialed over the last couple of years,
especially in all of these exercises post Gagun Shakti. There
was one in nineteen I forget the name of that,
but every such exercise has tested their systems defensive, you know,
because like I said, defensive AD is a very very
key component of offensive airpower.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
One last point on the topic of air defense you
kind of briefly refer to it in between right now,
is the electronic warfare aspect of it.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Now, either I'm not aware of it because perhaps it's
not been widely.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Reported, or it is true that, in fact, not a
lot of EW was used by India for its air defense.
And the reason I want to bring this up is
because over the course of the research for the last
two three seasons of an air defense, I've been coming
a lot lot more about about this technology where basically
you don't even need to fire missiles anymore, drones at
least when you have drones in coming just you know,
(26:06):
if you fired those electro magnetic waves and they sort
of you know, like you know, attack jag and then
but you don't really see a lot of that happening
at least that's what it's not been widely deported.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
So is that the case. And if that is the case,
why is it because the technology is not mature yet.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
No, the technology is evolving for fighting drones, and the
drone technology itself is evolving even as we speak. And
you know, the Russia Ukraine War just tells you that
the speed at which innovation is happening, it's like Friday,
the one side comes up with a problem, a drone
isn't is run into an issue, a defense wall, defense mechanism.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
By Monday, they would have fixed it and they would
be breaching that war.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
And that is how rapidly drone innovation is taking place
in the Russia Ukraine War. And one of the biggest
findings of that war, one of the biggest developments of
that war in the last year has been the use
of wire guided drones. I mean, that's like, you know,
it started with drones that were controlled by a fiber
optic caable. That's your first person view drones controlled with
(27:10):
a fiber optic cable a few kilometers two three kilometers,
so a first person viewed drone became something like a
wire guided anti tank missile, except this is a much
much smarter missile, carries an RPG seven shell underslung and
drives into the target. You can, you know, the operator
can literally steer it into the target, into a window
(27:32):
or a trench of foxhole, into any target that he chooses.
And today you're looking at wire guided FPV drones with
ranges of forty plus kilometers, which means that the drone,
the FPV drone has a spool of fiber opplicable and
the operator is guiding it forty kilometers away. It's a
smart weapons system and one man is able to create
(27:54):
this kind of damage in such depth. And the advantage,
of course of the foc the fiber optic cable is
that these are unjammable. Yes, you know that you're under
attack when you see the drone above you. That's how
quickly it comes in And how do you jam drones
like this? So you know, warfare is constantly evolving, and
when you're in the middle of a conflict, our opsin
(28:17):
door has taken a pause after four days of fighting.
The operation is still on. I'm sure the innovations will happen.
But in Russia Ukraine they've been fighting for it's entered
the fourth year now and they are looking at you know,
almost daily there are battles. I mean now it's the
tempo of conflict has slipped a little, but they are
(28:38):
looking at intense battles where one side is running into
drone walls. There's literally thousands of drones. You don't see
people on the battlefield anymore. You don't see soldiers walking around.
There was a story of one of the soldiers I'm
not sure if he's a Russian and Ukraine, and there
was a clip of him where he says that the
only time I saw a soldier from the other side
(29:00):
was when I had to surrender. The drones have emptied
out the battlefield. You cannot have massed armor, you can't
have concentrated troops, nothing of that sort. It scattered the battlefield.
But in a situation like ours, where it is a
very traditional way of war fighting both India and Pakistan,
all these elements were essentially evolutions, I would call it
(29:24):
of systems that have already existed. There was no Russia
Ukraine war kind of moment that forced us to go
entirely towards drones. In this case, for instance, drones are
an adjunct of conflict. They are not the conflict itself,
like what it's happened on the front, the way the
(29:45):
First World War descended into trench warfare, you know, static
positions and all that. Here it's a bit of drones,
it's a bit of new age tech aid systems and
all that, but a lot of it is legacy systems,
and some of it is innovations like the I C
c S, which is you know, marries all of these
old and new together.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Sandipa, I wanted to talk to you about the escalation matrix,
the escalation ladder is, how is how analysts talk about
it before we get into India, what it did, and
like you were telling me during the break that we
should obviously touch upon how everything basically led to India
calling the nuclear bluff, those those years and decades of
(30:26):
surety that Pakistan had just because we have nukes, they
will not, you know, think of striking our military.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Assets at the very least.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
But before we do that, I want to understand why
is this term escalation ladder such a hot topic among
among strategic and different defense analysts because it was this
this ladder. This ladder was first thought of by by
Herman Khan. He's a cold ar astrategist who used to
work with the Rand Corporation. Then he went on to
(30:55):
set up his own think tank. Uh. He began with
if I'm not wrong, level not Well or drunks of
the Ladder, which he then expanded to forty four. Now something,
you know, when I read those rungs, it seems like
the most obvious thing in the world to me, Like
you do A B does something, then you do this
in response, he does this in response, You do this
in response. It's like how any fight would happen, like
(31:18):
and in even a basic parking dispute, like you know,
someone stretches my car, I get out, he gets out,
He throws a cussword at me, I throw a cussword
at him.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Someone throws a.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Fist And that's how escalations happen. So it seems very obvious.
So then why do you have this very vast body
of work on this? Why do you have so much
academic talk about this? How does it help defense analysts
like you, strategic strategic planners like those in the government
or in the military. How does this theory help, Like,
(31:48):
let's talk about that academic part first before we talk
about what happened with.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Yeah, so you know they now the thing is that
the escalation ladders is primarily a Cold War construct, right.
This was created to understand how conflict would break out
if it did between the Warsaw Pact and NTO. Now,
I mean, you're looking at arsenals that had over ten
thousand nuclear weapons and it was like overkilled to a
(32:13):
degree of you know, ten twenty times they could destroy
the world ten twenty thirty times over that's the kind
of arsenals that they had, you know, amassed during the
Cold War, more than four decades of it. So they
were trying to understand how conflict would break out and
you know where they really needed to intervene and to
kind of make sure that this never spilled out into
(32:35):
anything other than say a proxy war or you know,
conflicts between nuclear weapons states never took place, and certainly
not between the blocks.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
So if you look at it all through the Cold War.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Which would be from nineteen forty five to effectively about
nineteen eighteen nine ninety and to the dissolution of the
Soviet Empire. Most of the wars that were fought were
proxy wars because the Soviets and the Americans, despite the
fact that they had such massive arsenals that didn't make sense,
they were very wise in the sense that they never
(33:06):
sought to fight each other militarily. There was never any
incident on you know, a say, in Europe for instance,
where they were both acutely conscious of the fact that
any conflict would immediately spiral out of control and it
would go out of you know, to a point where
you have people starting to use tactical nukes and stuff
(33:27):
like that. So that's a very complicated system. I think
we should talk over another day, but you know, it
should suffice to say that they were very mindful of
conflicts pilling out of control, which is why tactical nukes
for instance, which is basically battlefield nuclear weapons that you
can use on the battle.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Field.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Commanders would use them. Say, if they saw, you know,
an avalanche of Soviet tanks coming towards them, the NATO
guys would immediately launch a nuclear mortar or a nuclear
artillery gun or something like that. They took those out
of the battlefield. They said that extremely extremely provocative. They
would result in Soviets throwing nuclear weapons and that would
(34:07):
you know, spiral out into a nuclear, all out nuclear exchange.
But you know, coming back to the subcontinent now, where
the arsenals are smaller, the nuclear armed states, both India
and Pakistan share long international boundaries, and of course we
have a long contested boundary with China as well. This
is a trijunction of three nuclear weapons states. It's as
(34:28):
fragile as that. But when it comes to India and Pakistan,
the biggest, you know, the watershed moment for this subcontinent
was the nineteen ninety eight poker In tests where India
first declared itself a nuclear weapons par and then Pakistan
followed suit a few days later. Now, two conventional American
(34:48):
thinkers strategious. There was one particularly famous, one of Indian origin.
I don't want to name him, but he said, you know,
the big thing of Pokern two is the fact that
now India and Pakistan will not have any more wars
right now. He was applying a NATO warsaw paradigm on
the subcontinent, where you have two nuclear arms stags. Of
course they won't go to war. What he discounted was
(35:09):
the possibility of the Pakistan military constantly looking for conflict
below the nuclear threshold. They says that once we have
achieved parity, so called nuclear parity with India, India will
not attack us conventionally with ground forces of the time
they had in nineteen seventy one and dismembered the country.
So if you look at it, the Pakistan nuclear weapons
(35:31):
program in its first phase from the nineteen seventy one
to about the mid eighties, when they actually developed the bomb,
was about protecting the territorial integrity of Pakistan.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Right.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
It was a survival it's a tool for survival. But
later when they got parity, they were embolded. They said,
now India, we are safe from any conventional Indian conventional
attack using the military conventional forces because they're afraid we'll
use the nuclear weapons on them. And operations like Parakram
(36:03):
in two thousand and one may have actually fueled that
theory that look, they came, they mobilized on the border,
they were scared of un nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
And they went back.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
This is possibly what the generals and Rabal Pindi were thinking,
and that is when they began this death so called
death by a thousand cuts, that's terror.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Terror attacks.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
You had, of course Parliament, and then you had the
Mumbai terror attacks of two thousand and six, the train
bombings two thousand and eight, and before that you had
nineteen ninety three, the serial blasts in Mumbai.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
More than two hundred and seventy people were killed in that.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
So they saw this as a means of protecting their
strategic acids, which is the terror groups. So it's the
Pakistan military using the shield of nuclear weapons. That's a
strategic acid to protect the sword of so called non
state actors. Right, So the sword and shield strategy is
what they've been using since Pokern nineteen ninety eight. Now
(36:58):
what happens is that with every attack they're probing our
tolerance levels. So, okay, it's two thousand and one, it's Parliament,
then two thousand and six it's Mumbai, and for some reason,
the generals are obsessed with attacking Mumbai. The Pakistani generals
two thousand and eight, massive spectacular so called terror attack
(37:18):
where the world takes note of these Pakistani non state actors.
But it's all the Pakistan military is doing. And then
they realize that maybe twenty six eleven is a is
a big thing that we can avoid. We should possibly
look at smaller, low level kind of attacks confined to
Kashmir because we don't want to provoke India beyond the point.
(37:40):
And then they start the Kashmir thing. Now what they
don't realize is when the government changes. You have Prime
minister more of these government coming. In twenty fourteen, he's
tested with a couple of terror attacks and you can
see a very distinct pattern of the park military testing
him out through Patan court. First the attack on the
air base in fifteen, and then in twenty sixteen you
(38:01):
have the attack on the army camp in Quri, which
is when the government authorizes these shallow cross border strikes
which are the so called surgical strikes. Twenty nineteen you
have that suicide bombing which kills forty of the CRP
of Javans, and you have for the first time the
government authorizing the use of airpower to strike that one
(38:23):
camp in Kayberpaktun Ballacote, the Jaba top camp one surgical
one air strike against one camp, one target. And in
twenty twenty five you know what happened in Zindu three
phase operation targeting all the terror infrastructure, their military sites
for the first time, and then of course their airfields.
So what the Pakistan military now realizes, to their horror
(38:46):
is if they were probing our red lines, this government
was probing their red lines. So if you look at it,
there's been a gradual pattern of moving up the escalation
ladder where you have that from ground based strikes in
twenty six sixteen to one air strike in twenty nineteen
and massive strikes all across in twenty three minutes eleven
(39:08):
air bases and before that nine targets, nine targets. So
they must be very worried the fact that their nuclear
weapons have not deterred them, right, the convention passed Convention
of nuclear weapons deterring a response by India has not worked.
So the escalation ladders, the dynamics have completely changed. So
(39:29):
if General Musherff thought he was this great commando general
who had discovered space for conventional war below the nuclear threshold,
kargl happens exactly one year after the nuclear tests, and
he's so impoltant he believes that they won't be a
conventional response and you know, India will kind of surrender
all of this territory that we have captured as classic
(39:50):
Pakistan army thinking for you, they throw the first punch
and then they think that all the consequences will take
care of themselves, or the Americans or the Chinese will
come to our rescue. That's always been their strategy. They
are the most tactical military in the world. Their whole
ethos is to throw the first punch somehow, keep fighting
with these tactical responses and when the strategic response hits them,
(40:13):
they go running into the United States and to China
and all that. So, in a sense, this is what
has happened with the escalation matrix. And it is interesting
if you heard that briefing by the three djmos of
the Army, Navy, and the Air Force, where it was
the Naval d who mentioned this escalation ladder that we
have worked out. Now I think this is the first
(40:35):
public confirmation of an escalation matrix that the armed forces
of India have worked out against Pakistan, because I think
the government has figured out, look, there's never going to
be a nuclear war of the kind that we think
that might be if we take care of the following
and those four red lines that were articulated by Pakistan
(40:57):
in about two thousand and one by Talikid why he
is the head of their then head of their Strategic
Plans division, was that they would use nuclear weapons if
they lost a lot of territory, if their military machinery
was destroyed, if India tried to strangulate them economically, or
if they were destabilized internally politically, so they would resort
(41:19):
to nuclear weapon exchange. So the government seems to have
worked out this escalation matrix, this escalation ladder of what
is possible to do without provoking an all out war
or even the use of tactical nuclear weapons. So it's
a constant game. It's a cat and mouse game. So
if you noticed after Parakhrum, when you had this massive
(41:44):
six month mobilization along the border which petered out the
Indian Army had to withdraw. You had a few very
bright generals then going back to the drawing board and saying, hey, listen,
we could have done much better than we did. What
else can we do that will force Pakistan to realize
the cost of, you know, supporting terrorism, And they came
up with the cold Start course st strategy which was
(42:05):
instant thing. Within seventy two hours, you would have an
Indian response along the border, right, and so Pakistan responded
to cold start with a counter cold start, which was
to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield dangerously provocative,
which is you authorize field commanders to use these nuclear
weapons in short range ballistic missiles or rockets. And so
(42:29):
this this kind of thing started playing about. Now, what
has happened in with operations Sindhur is that the government
seems to have had an overview of all the capabilities
that it has at its disposal and has chosen airpower
as its instrument of choice here Right from the get go,
from the first strikes on the eighth of May right
(42:52):
down to sorry, the seventh of me right down to
the third, second and third week, tenth, ninth and tenth,
it was you know, primarily par century. You had army,
You had armories involvement along the loc The army has
also done a lot of work, you know, supporting in
support of these operations. They have carried out some strikes themselves,
(43:12):
but a bulk of the heavy lifting was done by
the Indian Air Force. Now that's another unique point about
this government is that unlike previous governments, it's understood the
uses of coersive airpower. What is your object? What's your
end state? The Pakistan military believes and there is no
terrorism here. I'll be very frank, it is not terrorism
(43:33):
of the way that we see al kay, that terror
which is not a state actor, it's a non state actor.
He's fighting some two thousand year war right against the West.
What we have is the case of an army with
a country which is adopted terror as an instrument of
state policy, with so called non state actors as a
(43:54):
low cost option against India. What the government has done
is to raise the cost of that conflict by saying
that if you think this is a low cost option
for you, please look at all your shattered basis and
your you know infrastructure, your radars, your busted radars and
all of that to make up your mind that no,
(44:14):
this is not a low cost option anymore. The accountants
must be horrified, because I'm sure by now they've had
enough time to you know, tabulate their losses and they've
probably gone back to the generals and said, Sir, I
don't think it's worth it, because we thought we're going
to fight a low cost war. This is cost us
about a year's budget, year's defense budget or whatever the
blow could be. But so that is the whole you know,
(44:38):
effect of this high cost versus low cost thing which
the government has kind of imposed on the Pakistan Army.
So they have chosen airpower as the instrument to deliver
those effects in the future, it could also be the
navy for instance, if you know, that option also remains.
So it has been speculated that the fourth phase or
(45:00):
the fifth phase of operations indoor before the operations were paused,
was a naval strike from Karachi from around the south
for a blockade or but definitely something from the North
Arabian Sea. So this has put you know, the Pakistan
military in a quandary. They don't know where the next
(45:20):
strike could come from. If if it is an operation
which is ongoing which is meant to target you know,
terrorist training camps or deter the Pakistan military. There are
all these options. The whole thing is to enforce good
behavior on the part of the Pakistan military and to
get them to seize and desist from using terrorism. So
that's the whole game plan. I think this government has
(45:41):
understood the way to do it, as opposed to previous
governments who really didn't have any answer to you know,
park sponsorship of terror.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah right.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
You know, if you boil that concept of the escalation
matrix down to those four or five days, three four nights,
I want to know whether you would agree with me
when I sort of speculate or just do guess work.
Is that in the aftermath of the attack, when you
had the India's military establishment and the government set up
(46:14):
coming together planning what to do next, they had factored
in that it's not going to be that one strike.
It's going to be that one strike. Yes, there's gonna
be a response. We are going to respond, They're going
to respond again. So we want to take it to
a level where perhaps we are seen justified as attacking
their military assets without doing it on D one. The
(46:35):
reason I asked that is because I'll tell you something.
On May seventh, I obviously, like you know you and
every other journalist, was woken up from my sleep.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
I rushed to office.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
You had the press confidence had happening at around ten
ten thirteen in the morning. It was the Foreign Secretary
Mystery who had addressed the day became afternoon, and then
towards the evening when I Thakahara, I was going back home,
I was thinking, yeah, I'm not quite sure if this
is really achieved? What the message, what the aim should
have been? I mean, okay, like you said, Balakur was
(47:08):
one camp, one strike, four or five missiles. These were
nine camps, several more missiles. But still, I mean, are
we sure you've sent that message home? I obviously did
not know what was going to come next in the
next few days, so that then, now that I think
about it, you know, seven days after the citization of hostilities,
(47:29):
I think of it this way. Now, was this sort
of wargamed? Was this planned?
Speaker 1 (47:34):
What do you think? Absolutely? Where's the doubt?
Speaker 3 (47:36):
So the escalation ladder actually means that they have wargained
this situation. They've wargained the operations as they would unfold, because,
as the Prime Minister said, it was going to be unprecedented.
Our punishment would be unprecedented, and therefore the response from
Pakistan and the Pakistan military would be equally unprecedented. And
(47:57):
I was asked here in this building by someone very senior,
what the Pakistan military's options, retaliatory options would be.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
This was on the day that we had struck.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
So I said that they would come and they would
attack all our air bases starting from Jamun, Kashmir in
the north right down to.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Gujarat in the south.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
And this is exactly what they did because I was
looking at you know, if you look at Balakot in
nineteen one strike one camp a couple of PGMs. The
Pakistanis responded a few hours later in near one of
our military bases, they dropped PGMs as well. So it
was in a say, if you can call it that proportionate, Now,
(48:37):
if you struck at nine places, they would try to
do the same, you know, because for them it's all
about it. It's all about parity. For them that they
struck nine, we also struck nine all of that, so
then we had to respond to that. So it is
it's like looking at a chessboard and you know, anticipating
the next five moves that if I moved my say,
(48:58):
if I moved my castle here, what will by adversary?
How would he respond? And then how will I respond
to his thing? It's like a game of chess exactly.
So they possibly wargamed it to about five or six
or maybe even more than that before international pressure forced
a cessession of hostilities, and we would have achieved a
lot of what we had set out to do, which
(49:20):
was to basically tell raise the cost of sponsoring terror
for Pakistan. And that escalation ladder seems to have been very,
very mediculously wargamed. They seem to have had the time,
which is why they took their time to respond to Pelgam,
which happened in April twenty second of April, and you
(49:40):
had a response here on the night of sixth of May.
So all of this time was spent in wargaming this,
creating that escalatory ladder so that we weren't caught by
surprise save when Pakistan came and struck our air bases.
So what if he comes and strikes our air bases?
If he does that, which means that he has given
us the right to respond to by a time his
(50:01):
military targets, which is what we did on the second
day and the third wave of the third phase of
the operations. But you know, the important thing there is
that why they would have created the escalation ladder, why
the government of India and the defense officials would have
created it, to my mind, is the fact that for
the first time since nineteen seventy one, we had struck
(50:22):
targets inside Pakistan's Punjab province. Yes, and that's the most
important province to them. It's like seventy percent of their
armies recruited from there. Pakistan is nothing but Punjab with
a couple of Allied provinces.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
That's it. That is the core.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
It is the center of gravity of Pakistan. And if
you attacked terror training camps there, the camps were located
there precisely for this reason. They felt safe. They never
thought they would be struck the way we struck them
on the seventh of me And once we struck them,
we had crossed a red line attacking targets in Punjab
(50:58):
province and therefore the government had to pay to the response,
and which is why you had this civil Uh, you know,
the drills, the emergency drills for the citizens. So that
is the it's all part of the escalation land. And
this is something that we've not seen in a long time.
There is prossibly two generations of Indians who have not
seen a raid, sirens or seen these drills and all that,
(51:20):
not since the seventy one war. So it was the
government kind of anticipating that these would be the responses,
and so it's very important. It's part of planning. It's
good staff work, good diligent military officials, and of course
politicians have sat around a table and they've decided General
what are my options? Or Air Marshall, ar Chief Marshall,
what are my options? What do I have? That shows
(51:41):
you politico military planning of the highest order. And this
is something that we've not seen very often. We're always
criticized that every time the military comes with an option,
the political class they don't exercise that option because there
is no ability to take that decision, that tough decision
make that you know that call do I strike now,
(52:02):
or do I strike later? Or do I not strike
at all? Which is when Prime Minism and mohun see
the Air Force said that you give me the location
of the terror training camps. That's what a Chief Marshall
Farley major tots that he said. I just went to
the government and said, you give me the location the
terror training camp. My jets are going to be air
on we will knock out the camps. And they could
not get the locations of those camps. They didn't have
(52:25):
intel they didn't have a ground in test, which is
so important. This time they did and you know the
results are you for you to see nine strikes on
terror camps?
Speaker 1 (52:35):
Right?
Speaker 3 (52:36):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (52:36):
One more point? One more point on this on this
topic is.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
The red lines of decision making within that escalation matrix.
I'll simplify it. So, what is that red line for
let's say the tactical army commander on the ground by
you can do this much in response to when they
attack you to get your okay from your boss? Similarly,
what is that red line for the Air force chief?
Speaker 1 (53:02):
So the night of May ninth and.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
Tenth, I think was the most intense fighting between two sides.
You had Pakistan launching its counter attack, it's official counterattack.
Speaker 1 (53:11):
The days before that.
Speaker 2 (53:12):
Was just drone swamps sent across the across the across
the ivy. But you had the Pakistan launching their their
accounter attack propper there also, give it, give it a name.
That very night the Air Force truck back. It wasn't KiHa,
it was that very night. So at what point is
it key okay? Pakistan is doing this, doing this, doing this,
(53:33):
Does the Air Force chief go oh go attack their
basis or does he have to go to the PM
because in India, unlike in Pakistan, you have the government
that is supreme and the government of the day decides
what military action you take. So for the Air force chief,
for the Army chief, for the Navy chief, what is
that line beyond which they have to seek approval or
seek okay from the Prime Minister or the government.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
Can we do this because this is going to lead
to this by the.
Speaker 3 (53:57):
Way, yes, So the Prime Minister said that he is
author is just commanders to do whatever is they see fit.
But the point is that no action by the Indian
armed forces is taken without looping in the politicians, without
consulting them. Of course, because we are a responsible democracy
and the military is an organ of the state, it
(54:18):
is not the state as it is in Pakistan. So
to my mind, all of these decisions would have been
with the approval of the ccs, including the Prime Minister
and the Defense Minister. All of these decisions, whether it
is to cross over and strike military infrastructure, that that
would have been a very very crucial decision. And the
fact is that it had to happen in a matter
(54:40):
of hours, and both of those strikes, if you see
on the eighth and on the tenth, the seventh, you
had the first strikes against the targets on the eighth,
and then you had the next set of strikes on
the tenth. Both of these would have the CCS on
the loop and be authorized by the Cabinet Committee on
(55:01):
Security because or these would have already been pre arranged
and those approvals would have been given that if they
crossed this particular thing, you're authorized to take the following action. Yeah,
so you've wor gamed it and you have looked at
the escalation matrix that you will respond proportionately if he
does this.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
This is what you're going to do.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
And slowly it started going up the nuclear ladder, the
escalation ladder, till the time that it reached a point
when Pakistan, we believe, fired ballistic missiles at US.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
And that was deeply.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
Provocative because, as I was saying to you earlier, no
nuclear weapons state has ever fired a ballistic missile at
another nuclear weapons state, or even used air force for
that matter, for fear that these could be seen as
weapons launch. Nuclear weapons launched one side is decided to
nukee the other side, and this is what Pakistan seems
(55:51):
to have done on the ninth, which is why they
fired a short range ballistic missile the FATA two. We've
seen fragments of at least one of those missiles, which
the government has very interestingly called a high spile strike,
which is they wanted to downplay the whole you know,
the impact of this not alarm the rest of the world,
(56:14):
but the message that was sent out by striking at
Chaklala and Sargodha air bases, and these are the old
names of these air bases, of course, nur Khan and
mushaff were to tell the pakistanis that we are not
deterred by the fact that you fired ballistic missile. If
you've crossed the line, we have something else coming. So
which is one of the reasons why we struck so
(56:34):
emphatically across the geography of Pakistan, including Sargodha and Chaklala,
which I never thought we would ever strike. You know
that that is that's a huge red line that we
crossed and which might have frightened the entire Pakistani military
establishment because all of their notions of deterrence and all
of that, you know, deterring us through nuclear weapons and
(56:55):
you know, all of those past precedents, all that was
thrown to the winds and the cells landed there with
pinpoint precision sending out a message. So that's what the
escalation matrixes. And this I think is a very very
good sign of the fact that we are seeing politico
military synergy of a very high order room and.
Speaker 2 (57:16):
Also a tri services energy of a very high order.
But I think that's also a topic for another episode,
because that's quite a vast topic.
Speaker 3 (57:24):
Right.
Speaker 1 (57:24):
One last point on this episode.
Speaker 2 (57:26):
Oh, by the way, good reference to the high speed missile,
because I've always wanted in that press comprisci which miss
that in the world is loose speed because it's in
the missiles supposed to be high speed in the first place.
Speaker 3 (57:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (57:38):
But last point on this on this episode, the Armed
Forces wing that will have felt quite left out the
Indian Navy, I would I want to know again, this
is guesswork from me. Do you think it's because of
something that Vice Admiral a and promote the referred to
in one of the briefings is that he basically ended
(57:59):
up saying our superiority when it comes to navy versus
navy is far, far, far extreme right, I'm not so.
I know, the Indian Army is better than the Pakistani Army.
The Indian Air Force to an extent also is better
than the Pakistani Army Pakistani Air Force. So the Pakistani
Air Force seems to have some high tech jets with them,
we have to give them that. But the Navy, when
(58:21):
you compare these two services, I think it is far
far superior to the Pakistan Pakistan Navy. So do you
think that by using using the Indian Navy in any form,
whether there is to blockade the Karachi Port economy, basically
threatening Pakistan's economy, or even fire missiles at at Karachi Port,
that would be dramatically moving your escalation added directly from
(58:42):
zero to ten. And that's perhaps why you do not
want to use your navy until you really, really really
reach that level.
Speaker 3 (58:49):
And you really have to do you have to say
about I think, you know, it would all depend on
the kind of UH response that we would get from
the Pakistanis. And I think what they did by five
ballisticness Hales was deeply provocative. They chose to respond to
that provocation using the air force again, which was the
strikes against the air bases and for all you know,
(59:10):
the next phase would possibly have been from the sea.
Like I mentioned, it could possibly have been the navy
as well. You would have naval warships firing Brahmas from
the south. And this was I think, yeah, well, maybe
there is an element of the navy being left out
of the conflict because it was the cessation of hostilities
(59:30):
happened just as phase three had ended, and you had
a lot of you know, the President Trump claiming credit
for arranging that so called ceasefire, which is not a ceasefire,
by the way, a cessation of operations, a pause and
not halt. So the fact is that, yes, of course,
the Indian Navy, you know, it enjoys enormous overmatch as
(59:55):
compared to the Pakistan Navy. Pakistan Navy is competent, it's
creating a lot of assets, but when it comes to
comparisons with the Indian Navy, they might as well be
in Karachi Port or you know, be hiding because the
Indian Navy has more missiles than Pakistan has warships. Wow,
so that is I mean, it is over It is
(01:00:17):
like a super heavyweight boxer against say a bantamweight or
a flyweight there's no match. And this is something that
the Indian Navy has been building up very carefully over
the last couple of years because it is now looking
at the China threat as well emerging into the Indian Ocean,
so which is why they're preparing for a two front
maritime theater as well. In addition to Pakistan, they have
(01:00:39):
to look at China, so there is a huge overmatch there.
But yes, it would all depend on the means that
the military that the government would choose to send that
message out to the Pakistan military. In this case, they
seem to have chosen the army and of course the
air force. The next time it could well be the Navy's.
Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
Turned right, Great Sundep. Just two quick final questions.
Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
This is something that I do on this podcast is
when we reach the end of the episode, just like
very two questions that have sort of brief answers that
satisfy my producer Cltiques need to give him content that
he can then use to promote the episode on different platforms.
So question number one is something it might sounds silly
to someone like you, someone who follows the world of
(01:01:23):
defense so well, but it's something that honestly people on
the news slore have been wondering, in this day of
first GPS, satellite coordinates, night vision, et cetera, et cetera,
what advantage does fighting in the night provide, Because, like
we spoke about, apart from that one, I think May eight,
if I'm not wrong, it was it was all the strikes,
(01:01:43):
whether it was from Pakistani attempts or Indian strikes, they
happened only at night.
Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
What's the reason for this in this day and age.
Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
Well, striking at night is you know, it's always been
advantages throughout history, and it's not so much about the
fact that there is light or there's no light. That
of course is a major factor, but the fact is
that it's also human endurance. Human endurance is the alertness
is the lowest post midnight. You know, when it's two,
(01:02:13):
two am, three am. You know, your reflexes tend to
be slower, even if you're up all night, I mean,
you're very alert, you've been rested, and all your faculties
tend to be a little you know, duller in the
early hours of the day, and which is why a
lot of these attacks are chosen for that pre dawn attacks,
(01:02:35):
and they are the most effective. Most attacks usually happen
at around that time because you have the benefit of darkness.
You're attacking at night when you cannot visually sport the adversary,
but you're also attacking in a time when his faculties
are at the.
Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Lowest, right and final one.
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Karana Hills, Now, sand just like warn you, this is
a podcast so you can be yourself. You can just
be like, you know, I'm just gonna say what I
think without having to worry about because this podcast is
not supposed to be reporting of what's happened.
Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
This podcast is not supposed to be like this.
Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
We know for a fact this is about you, your
experience and your gut feeling about what what what what
it means For people who don't know, There's been a
lot of speculation on social media that among the places
India hit was this place called Karana Hills, around seven
kilometers away from an air base. India actually hit Sagoda
or the Mushaf Airways. The Indian Air Force was asked
(01:03:33):
about this at the official press conference, Air Marshall Party
replied with a smirk on his face, saying that oh,
I didn't even know what was there at Karana his
thank you for telling me that, but maybe did not
hit that, but people so that's smirk on his face
and said there's something in a smirk which is not
making sense. Is this just too much speculation and what
do you what is your gut feeling about did India
(01:03:55):
end up striking Keran Hills, which, by the way, nine
percent is probably home to some, if not all, not all,
definitely some of Pakistan's nuclear weapons equipment.
Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
Right, so, we know the fact that the Karana Hills complex,
it is one of the most sensitive strategic locations in Pakistan.
It's been so since the early eighties when they had
their subcritical tests there as you know in nineteen eighty three.
That's also where they stored their M eleven missiles. And
in the last decade or so, it's become those tunnels
have been converted into a storage site, you know, special
(01:04:28):
weapons storage site and extremely sensitive for the Pakistani military.
If the Pakistan is supposed to have about one hundred
and seventeen hundred and eighty warheads, I would imagine at
least half of them would be stored in these Karana
Hills complex. Now, as for the explosions in Karana Hills,
there are there are two blasts which the India Today
(01:04:52):
team has geode located right down to where they say
they were, right the entrance to the Karani Hills complex.
Now the Indian Air Force has of course denied it.
A Marshall Party with a smirk on his face, said
he had nothing to say about that, or we didn't strike.
But there were two explosions. So like you have those
(01:05:15):
unknown gunmen driving around and shooting all these terrorists and handlers,
you have unknown explosions as well. Interesting, so this is
something that you know, it's just the jury still out
on what happened. Who triggered off those two blasts? Was
it our missiles, was it our PGMs? Was it Pakistan?
(01:05:36):
Was it Pakistani military themselves who triggered off those blasts
to try and you know, try and tell the Americans, hey, listen,
we are under attack. That's you thought, I yeah, I
wouldn't discount it on their point. I thought, actually, yes,
they are capable of doing anything. They have fooled the
Americans for twenty years, right. They ran with the hairs
and they hunted with the hounds. They were helping the
(01:05:56):
Taliban and al Qaeda at the same time, hunting the
Taliban and the al Qaeda. So a military that has
managed these subterfuges, I mean, I wouldn't put anything past them,
So it could well be the Pakistan military. Who knows
that's the theory.
Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
I did not hear, but now that you say it, man,
that's quite plausible. Actually, great San, the fantastic chat and
loved having you. I knew back then when we planned
in our defense that it would be great to chat
with you about stuff to do with defense. And three
years later, two and a half years later, I stand
proven corrected because that was the wrong phrases, and three
(01:06:34):
years later I stand I was right basically. So a
great chat. I hope you had fun. Absolutely, it's delightful,
and I think I hope we can have you more
on this on this podcast and we can talk because
this is just think the beginning of when it comes
to decoding India's response to operations two part to help
attack to Pakistan to Pakistan military support for terrorism. Because
(01:06:55):
there's so many different aspects standards to this. For example,
how how was the Indian army all along the Lysia
right now? Because you have to imagine that is something
that must have also been playing in the back of
the head of the community planners. What is China doing
what they might end up do here in this conflict?
So I think that's something we'll discuss more in the
upcoming episodes. But till then, that's it. Thank you so
much and deep and thanks as always to what my
(01:07:17):
producer will do and to all our listeners and viewers.
Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
That's it for this week's Defense Toes. For more, tune
in next week.
Speaker 4 (01:07:22):
Bie, do you sometimes get frustrated choosing what to eat
for diabetes management while stopping yourself from eating That chocolate
pudding is good?
Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
But is it really enough?
Speaker 4 (01:07:42):
This month, Health Wealth will be doing a special podcast
on World Diabetes Day, which is the fourteenth of November.
Tune in and discover with me what nutrients diabetics should
be having and how to supplement your diet for your
long term well being. You can catch episode on our website, YouTube, Apple, Spotify,
(01:08:04):
and other audio streaming platforms.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!